Baptist Hospital’s Preslar to Step Down June 30: Retirement is Another Step in Medical-Center Reorganization

By Bertrand M. Gutierrez, Winston-Salem Journal, N.C.

May 24–The planned reorganization of Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center moved ahead yesterday when Len Preslar, the president and chief executive of N.C. Baptist Hospital, announced that he will retire June 30.

Donny Lambeth, the hospital’s chief operating officer, has been appointed interim president.

Preslar’s announcement comes the day after Dr. Richard Dean, the president and chief executive of Wake Forest University Health Sciences, announced his plan to retire June 30. Dr. William Applegate, the dean of the medical school, was picked as health sciences’ interim president.

Preslar’s retirement marks another key step in a reorganization plan announced in March to replace the current administrations at the hospital and health sciences with a single, overarching governing body.

Health sciences and the hospital make up the medical center — the Triad’s largest employer with more than 11,000 jobs, hospital officials said. The combined net revenue of the organizations is projected to be $1.6 billion this year.

Rather than have two CEOs reporting to separate boards at the hospital and health sciences, the plan is to have one CEO over both entities, and give more power to the medical center’s board of trustees.

Preslar, sitting in his office with a glass-ceiling view of the sky, spoke yesterday about what he said was a growing reality for academic medical centers across the United States: the need to change administrative policies in a more complex world. That world, he said, is one in which hospital services, research and education must operate under one umbrella to serve the greater good.

What the reorganization is intended to tackle is an age-old dilemma of academic medical centers, the “silo mentality,” Preslar said.

“There are silos of autonomy and groupings that tend to operate almost autonomously to a greater degree than you’d like out of self-interest,” he said, “and those silos might be the hospital and the medical school. They might be the clinical mission, the research mission, the educational mission. They might be medicine and surgery within the medical school.”

The challenge of getting all those on the same page isn’t unique to the medical center, said Steve Robertson, the chairman of the medical center’s board of trustees. Other schools, including New York University, Johns Hopkins University, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Colorado, have gone through similar reorganizations, he said in a telephone interview.

Without centralized decision-making, Preslar said, “the unfortunate consequence of all that is the age-old indictment that we’re vulnerable to what’s called 1,000 points of veto.

“Every time you want to do something and you can’t get absolute consensus to do it, you’re stymied, you’re stalemated; you can’t make timely decisions,” he said. “So some things you choose not to do, some things you compromise on. And instead of the greater good that’s being served, it’s the silos that almost have veto power, and it’s not unique here.”

Robertson, who praised Preslar’s work ethic, said that board members at the medical center would try within a few weeks to select a consultant to help them search for the new CEO.

Preslar, 59, has been at the hospital for 38 years, including 19 as chief executive and 13 years as the chief financial officer. He said that he had no interest in being the new CEO.

During Preslar’s tenure, the hospital expanded to become a complete health-care system.

According to a hospital news release, new facilities and programs during his tenure include the Comprehensive Cancer Center facility; the Sticht Center on Aging and Rehabilitation; outpatient rehabilitation programs at CompRehab; long-term care and rehabilitation services at Oak Summit, heart transplantation; positron emission tomography; Gamma Knife; and the Downtown Health Plaza.

A native of Concord, Preslar is a graduate of Wake Forest and earned his master’s of business administration from UNC Greensboro. He said he plans to stay in Winston-Salem and catch up on other things he likes to do — gardening, golf and tennis, to name a few.

“My wife and I met at Wake Forest. We’re both North Carolinians. So this is home…. People retire to North Carolina; why should I go anywhere else?” he said.

— Bertrand M. Gutierrez can be reached at 727-7283 or at bgutierrez@wsjournal.com.

—–

Copyright (c) 2007, Winston-Salem Journal, N.C.

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.