Anthony “Tony” Armada is leaving Advocate Lutheran General Hospital in suburban Chicago to become CEO of Swedish Health Services, the largest health system in Seattle.
Armada has been president of Advocate Health's Park Ridge, Ill., teaching hospital since 2009, joining the Chicago area's largest system from Henry Ford Hospital and Health Network, where he had been president and CEO since 2004.
At Swedish, he succeeds interim CEO Marcel Loh, who stepped in after Kevin Brown left to become president and CEO of Atlanta-based Piedmont Healthcare.
Armada's age was not available at deadline.
Swedish is a not-for-profit health system with more than 1,000 staffed beds across the five campuses of Swedish Medical Center, as well as a medical group with more than 100 primary-care and specialty clinics.
“Tony Armada brings an impressive record of leading large, diverse and innovative healthcare systems focused on patient safety and care quality,” Swedish Community Board Chair Nancy Auer said in a news release.
In 2007 Armada was the inaugural chairman of the Asian Health Care Leaders Association, and he is a past chairman of the American Hospital Association's Institute for Diversity in Health Management. He was twice named to Modern Healthcare's list of the Top 25 Minority Executives in Healthcare.
In 2012, the system formed an affiliation with Providence Health & Services, a Roman Catholic system based in Renton, Wash., that operates about 30 hospitals in the western U.S. Swedish remains secular, though its financial results are now reported as a market of Providence.
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