Sebastianelli retiring as CEO of Jefferson Health System

Looking back on nearly 12 years as the head of Radnor, Pa.-based Jefferson Health System, Joseph Sebastianelli says his greatest accomplishment has been helping to create an environment where the system's hospitals deliver clinical excellence.

Sebastianelli, 67, who has spent more than four decades as an attorney, and healthcare and health insurance industry executive—will retire as president and CEO of Jefferson Health System on Dec. 31. The system's board has not yet named his successor. Serving southeastern Pennsylvania, Jefferson Health System does not provide care directly or control patient care, which is provided by the system's members: Thomas Jefferson University Hospitals, based in Philadelphia, and Main Line Health, based in Bryn Mawr, Pa.

Under Sebastianelli's direction since February 2002, Jefferson Health's annual revenue grew to $3.1 billion from $1.4 billion and net annual operating income increased to $232 million from $18 million.

Coming to Jefferson Health from the payer world, Sebastianelli and his team focused on the question: What value can we bring at the central level without interfering with the clinical process at the hospital level? To do that, they centered on what he calls four “value propositions” that include managing all of the payer contracts for the system's hospitals; handling all of the hospitals' financing; setting quality benchmarks for the hospitals; and establishing captive insurance companies to deal with malpractice suits, which he said were a big problem when he started.

Given healthcare's current push toward paying for value-driven care, Sebastianelli suggested his successor might be a person who brings largely different experiences to the role. “My skill set was on financial parameter setting,” Sebastianelli said. “Do we need someone more clinical, for example?”

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