Bernd retiring as longtime CEO of Sentara Healthcare

David Bernd, CEO of Norfolk, Va.-based Sentara Healthcare, is retiring next year.

Howard Kern, Sentara's president and COO assume the role after Bernd's retirement, effective March 3, 2016.

Bernd, 66, has worked at not-for-profit Sentara for more than four decades and has spent the past 21 years as CEO. Since Bernd took the helm in 1995, the system has grown from a four-hospital, $600 million organization serving the Hampton Roads region to a $4.7 billion, 12-hospital system with locations in North Carolina and Virginia, including home-care services and a health plan that covers over 450,000 people.

"I think the national reputation Sentara has for clinical quality and patient safety in our community is our greatest achievement," Bernd told Modern Healthcare on Thursday. "We were one of the first healthcare systems to put clinical indicators in all of our senior managers' variable pay and we invested in patient safety.”

Bernd praised the team he's worked alongside, saying Kern is "equally passionate and focused on clinical quality."

“I'm proud to continue the work we started as we innovate and challenge ourselves to grow smart and respond to the increasingly retail, digital and on-demand expectations of our consumers, further improve quality and patient safety, as well as the customer experience,” Kern said in a statement regarding the leadership change. "Dave has built a strong reputation and legacy for Sentara that will continue to be shaped as we take part in the national conversation about what health care should look like in the future.”