Baylor Scott & White Health has tapped James Hinton as the health system's next president and CEO, effective Jan. 16.
He replaces Joel Allison, who announced in March that he would retire early next year.
Hinton, 57, now serves as president and CEO of Albuquerque-based Presbyterian Healthcare Services, a position he has held since 1995. He will continue to work for Presbyterian, which is the largest private, not-for-profit system in the state, until he transitions to his new role in mid-January. He will relocate from Albuquerque to the Dallas area, where Baylor Scott & White is located.
Baylor Scott & White is the largest not-for-profit health system in Texas by number of hospitals, with 47 hospitals, a health insurance company, more than 6,000 physicians and 44,000 employees. The system selected Hinton after a nationwide search that included internal and external candidates.
Hinton is “one of the few health system leaders in the country who has successfully navigated an organization from a focus on volume to a focus on value,” Jim L. Turner, Baylor Scott & White chairman of the board of trustees, said in a statement.
At Presbyterian, which has about 11,000 employees, eight hospitals, a medical group with more than 800 providers and a health plan, Hinton focused on building a system with integrated financing and delivery—a comprehensive model that allowed investments in technology, clinical quality and workforce issues to be successful, he explained.
His focus at Baylor Scott & White will likely be on the physician organizations within the system, from accountable care organizations to employed models, as well as the system's investments in information technology, he told Modern Healthcare.
“IT is a big part of these businesses now and enabling the massive amounts of data that we produce every day to be digitally stored and retrieved for the benefit of patients is a critical strategy,” he said.
Additionally, a key part of Baylor Scott & White's current and future success lies in the system's health plan, he said.
“I have a fair amount of experience managing a health plan that accepts fixed payments from a variety of different customers and then organizes networks of hospitals and physicians to provide that care,” he said. “I believe in those models, because I think that providers properly incented can produce the highest value health care. …Baylor Scott & White is well-positioned but there's a lot of work to do.”
Hinton served on the American Hospital Association's board of trustees from 2011 through 2015, and in 2014 he chaired the organization.
Joel Allison, 68, officially departs Feb. 1. He will work with Hinton to help ease the transition, and then may become a senior adviser to the system's board chairman, a spokesman said. Allison spearheaded the 2013 merger between Baylor Health Care System and Scott & White Healthcare that created the massive system that is Baylor Scott & White Health. Before the merger, Allison was CEO of Baylor, a role he held since 2000. He joined Baylor's health system in 1993 as chief operating officer.
Baylor Scott & White recorded $7.44 billion in revenue in 2015, and posted a 9% operating margin, according to Modern Healthcare's financial database.
Presbyterian Healthcare Services reported total revenue of $2.84 billion in 2015 with an operating margin of 4.3%, according to the database.
