4 ORANGE COUNTY BUSINESS JOURNAL
‘Post-Affordable Care Act’ CEO
Sought for UCI Medical Center
Local breaking news: www.ocbj.com
MARCH 23, 2015
HEALTHCARE: New boss
says search ‘unfolding’
By VITA REED
Dr. Howard Federoff will soon take up
some heavy lifting in his new job as the University of California-Irvine’s top healthcare
executive.
The newly hired vice chancellor for health
affairs and dean of UC Irvine’s School of
Medicine is due to start in the post on July 1.
Federoff is a veteran head of healthcare
services at Georgetown University, which
operates 10 hospitals in the mid-Atlantic region around its main campus in Washington,
D.C. He said one early entry on his to-do list
here will be “playing a big role” in helping
UCI Chancellor Howard Gillman pick a
chief executive for the 411-bed UC Irvine
Medical Center, the
university’s teaching
hospital in Orange.
vice
Federoff’s
chancellor position
has been tweaked
with
expanded
roles—the post had
gone dormant under
previous Chancellor
Michael Drake, now
Federoff: ran 10-hospresident of Ohio
pital healthcare sysState University.
tem for Georgetown
The job carries reUniversity
sponsibility for all of
UCI’s medical education, research and clinical work.
Steinert
Federoff replaces Dr. Roger Steinert in the
role of medical school dean.
Steinert, a professor of ophthalmology and
director of the Gavin Herbert Eye Institute,
had held the dean’s post on an interim basis
after the retirement last July of Dr. Ralph
Clayman.
The job of chief executive of UCI Medical
Center, the top administrative post at the facility,
is open with the pending retirement of Terry
Belmont, who plans to step down June 30.
“We likely will still have a search unfolding as [Belmont] is departing,” said Federoff,
who offered kudos to Belmont.
“The health system, under CEO Terry Belmont’s direction, has really done a fine and
solid job in really being able to be in the operational world of healthcare delivery [effectively], and I think that some of the strategy
that’s unfolding with regard to the expansion
of ambulatory services has been well thought
through,” he said.
Federoff is currently executive vice president for healthcare services for Georgetown,
as well as executive dean of the medical
school there.
His “background, experience and leader-
UCI Medical Center: new vice chancellor of
health affairs also oversees 411-bed hospital in
Orange
ship skills will ensure that UCI accelerates its
contributions to human health and provides
the people of this region with world-class patient care,” Gillman said in a statement.
Federoff said he and Gillman have discussed finding “an executive who has to understand where healthcare is going in this
post-Affordable Care Act world” for the job
of chief executive for the medical center in
Orange.
Other characteristics include being a “team
builder,” high integrity and being “well
thought of within the legion of healthcare executives,” he said. “We’re searching for someone who will have a vision that will marry
well with mine.”
Federoff said that he was recruited to UCI
by a faculty search committee headed by
Bruce Tromberg, a professor and director of
the Beckman Laser Institute at UCI. The
committee hired New York-based executive
search firm Russell Reynolds Associates for
the recruitment process.
“I think it’s a strong university—it has an
inspiring new chancellor in Howard Gillman,” he said. “I think UCI medicine has an
opportunity to put a more effective and impactful footprint in Orange County. On the academic side, some of the clinical departments
have really done a spectacular job in being
able to grow and recruit talented clinicians
and clinician investigators.”
Background
Federoff came to Georgetown in 2007 and
spent the prior 12 years at the University of
Rochester. He received master’s, medical
and Ph.D. degrees from Yeshiva Universtity’s Albert Einstein College of Medicine in
New York and did his internship, residency
and clinical and research fellowships at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard
Medical School.
The physician is board-certified in internal
medicine and endocrinology and metabolism,
according to UCI.
The university noted that he also has done
advanced research in the areas of gene therapy and neurodegenerative disorders, such as
Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases, including serving as lead author of a 2014 study involving blood tests for Alzheimer’s. ■
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