Former Hospital VP to Be New CEO
By Bill Toland, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Jul. 24–Less than a week after its chief executive resigned, West Penn Hospital has found a replacement — Edward M. Klaman, the hospital’s vice president for much of the last five years.
Mr. Klaman, 62, returns to the company to replace Mark Palmer, who resigned from his post at The Western Pennsylvania Hospital in Bloomfield just a week after Jerry Fedele, CEO of the parent group, West Penn Allegheny Health System, did the same.
The region’s second-largest hospital system announced Mr. Klaman’s return yesterday.
The shake-up within the six-hospital system comes partly as a result of impatience with the long-planned but not-yet-implemented consolidation of the system’s two flagship hospitals, West Penn and Allegheny General.
Mr. Klaman was the executive vice president and chief operating officer at West Penn Hospital from 2002 until April 2007, when he left the company for retirement. Before joining West Penn Allegheny, he was CEO at Citizens General Hospital in New Kensington, and also was an executive with West Penn Allegheny’s chief rival, the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, spending a decade at its Shadyside hospital, until 1997.
He has a master’s degree in health-care administration from George Washington University. Before coming to Pittsburgh, he worked in Massachusetts and California.
The man he succeeds, Mr. Palmer, held the position for less than a year before tendering his resignation. Like Mr. Palmer, Mr. Klaman rose through the ranks of West Penn, the lesser-known of the two flagship hospitals, which joined in 2000 in a merger brought on by the bankruptcy of the Allegheny Health, Education and Research Foundation.
Mr. Klaman has experience with hospitals in transition. In 2000, while head of Citizens in New Kensington, he signed off on a decision to halt inpatient services, allowing West Penn Allegheny to occupy the building and handle outpatient surgery and diagnostic testing. Citizens was then absorbed by West Penn, helping to create the Alle-Kiski Medical Center. He also was on board with Shadyside Hospital when it was absorbed by UPMC.
The hire is effective Aug. 2.
—–
To see more of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.post-gazette.com.
Copyright (c) 2007, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.