The president and chief executive officer of Hospital Sisters Health System’s Illinois division has resigned after less than three months on the job.
HSHS spokeswoman Johanna Moll confirmed the resignation of Joseph J. Mullany in response to an inquiry from Illinois Times. Moll didn’t answer follow-up questions, such as the reason for Mullany’s resignation from a job he began on April 25 overseeing the health system’s Illinois operations.
A July 5 memo from HSHS President and CEO Damond Boatwright that was obtained by IT said Mullany’s resignation, effective immediately, was “due to a family situation.” No other details were provided.
“We wish him well moving forward,” Boatwright said in his memo to the HSHS Illinois Hospital Boards of Directors and the HSHS Illinois Hospital Foundation Boards of Directors. “Please keep Joe and his family in your thoughts and prayers.”
The memo also said, “Joe’s direct reports will now report to me as we start the search for a new HSHS Illinois president and CEO.”
Mullany, who is in his mid-50s, couldn’t be reached for comment.
The nonprofit Catholic health system, based near Riverton, operates the system’s flagship, 422-bed HSHS St. John’s Hospital in Springfield, as well as eight Catholic hospitals in the Illinois communities of O’Fallon, Breese, Decatur, Effingham, Greenville, Highland, Litchfield and Shelbyville, and six hospitals in Wisconsin.
The HSHS Illinois hospitals posted combined revenues of almost $1.4 billion in the fiscal year ending June 30, 2021. St. John’s posted $598.9 million in revenues and $27.8 million in revenues exceeding expenses, or a profit margin of 4.6%, according to the system’s financial statements.
Mullany told Springfield Business Journal in an interview published June 1 that he found the people of Springfield and central Illinois “very welcoming, very friendly” and that he was looking forward to “making some life-long friends and being active in the community.”
The native of western Massachusetts said HSHS was “a really heavily inpatient-driven organization.” He told SBJ he hoped to expand the system’s “ambulatory platform” – its outpatient services – “over the next several years.”
Mullany told SBJ he first became a hospital CEO at age 30 and held management jobs at Detroit Medical Center, Bayfront Health System in Florida and most recently, Vassar Brothers Medical Center in Poughkeepsie, New York.
Accompanying the “Q & A” interview was a photo of Mullany with his wife, Cori, and their three daughters, ages 13, 20 and 22.
Mullany was fired as president of not-for-profit Vassar Brothers in July 2020 after holding the position for less than a year, according to a story in the Poughkeepsie Journal.
The story didn’t say why he was terminated. IT hasn’t received a response from Nuvance Health, Vassar Brothers’ parent organization, to questions about Mullany’s departure.
Mullany was hired by the Poughkeepsie hospital in January 2020, two months before the COVID-19 pandemic hit the region between New York City and Albany served by the hospital, the Journal reported. His termination was reported in late July 2020.
The newspaper said Mullany “helped transform parts of the hospital into COVID units that have taken in over a hundred cases.”
Before that, Mullany was regional president and CEO of a regional network of seven for-profit hospitals in Florida operated at the time by Tennessee-based Community Health Systems.
He was with Bayfront Health from February 2018 until his resignation in August 2019, according to a story in the Tampa Bay Times.
The Times story said Mullany, who left after 18 months on the job, was responsible for strategic development. During that time, he became acting chief executive of the system’s flagship hospital, Bayfront Health St. Petersburg.
According to Times stories, he and other system leaders faced questions from the St. Petersburg City Council and unionized nurses about the hospital’s finances, staffing levels and the quality of care it was providing to the needy. The hospital sits on city-owned land.
Mullany defended the 480-bed hospital against the criticisms, the Times reported. His resignation came two weeks after the contentious St. Petersburg council meeting.
A company spokeswoman said at the time, “We appreciate Joe’s leadership and contributions over the last 18 months and wish him well.”
Community Health Systems officials didn’t respond to a request for comment from IT.
Mullany came to Bayfront Health after serving four years as CEO of Detroit Medical Center, a for-profit, eight-hospital system owned by Tenet Healthcare.
His tenure included the opening of the $42 million Children’s Hospital of Michigan, as well as joint investigations of Detroit Medical Center by state and federal officials.
The investigations in 2016 followed a Detroit News series about “decades of complaints about improperly sterilized instruments,” according to a News story.
The News reported Mullany’s “departure” as CEO in February 2017.
About the time the News series was published, Mullany faced another challenge when “talks broke down to extend a clinical services and administrative relationship with Wayne State University School of Medicine to extend its long-term clinical services and administrative relationship,” according to a News story.
The News reported: “Mullany kept a low profile following the surgical instrument scandal, repeatedly refusing to discuss it with The Detroit News. In interviews with Crain’s Detroit Business, though, he suggested the controversy was overblown and the DMC was victimized by the articles.
“He insisted the DMC was in the process of fixing the problems when the articles hit,” according to a News story. “Even so, the hospital system was cited by state and federal regulators with numerous infractions following publication of the articles.”
This article appears in A new look for Ninth Street.
