Who: Joseph Sebastianelli, 67
Retiring from: Jefferson Health System, based in Radnor, Pa.,
where he has served as president and CEO of the two-hospital organization for nearly 12 years. The system comprises Main Line Health and Thomas Jefferson University Hospitals. His retirement is effective Dec. 31.
How the system grew: Under his leadership, annual revenue grew to $3.1 billion from $1.4 billion, while net annual operating income increased to $232 million from $18 million.
Previous roles: Practiced law and also served as president of Aetna; co-president of US Healthcare; and executive VP of Scripps Health in San Diego.
Focus on quality: “Not-for-profit institutions should be driven by quality. … If you focus clinical people in the right way, they're just tremendous at improving quality. So that's what we did. We set the benchmarks. Our compensation system for hospital CEOs is almost 50% driven by the hospital meeting quality benchmarks and the hospitals drive that down into their clinical ranks.”
Challenges for his successor: “There might be a more clinically driven expertise that's needed. … Maybe we need to figure out how to reduce how much clinical care we deliver. How do we have value-driven care is what the current administration talks about.”
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