Who: David Bernd, 66
Retiring as: CEO of Norfolk, Va.-based Sentara Healthcare, effective March 3, 2016
To be succeeded by: Howard Kern, Sentara's president and COO
Long tenure: Bernd has worked at not-for-profit Sentara for more than four decades, spending 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 Virginia and North Carolina, including home-care services and a health plan that covers over 450,000 people.
Looking back: “I think the national reputation Sentara has for clinical quality and patient safety in our community is our greatest achievement. 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.”
New connections: “I think joint ventures will play an important role in the future. In the past we've seen a lot of joint operating agreements where there's not a real merger, and those things tend to fall apart when you give them a hard time. I think strategic alliances—trying to get together across a state to provide a basis for population management or best practices—are powerful.”
