Larry Goldberg
New chief executive of VUH named
Larry M. Goldberg, vice president for hospital operations at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, has been named executive director and CEO of Vanderbilt University Hospital. The appointment confers leadership responsibility for both the adult hospital and the Psychiatric Hospital at Vanderbilt. Goldberg, 43, will start work at Vanderbilt in mid-May.
“In Larry Goldberg we've found an executive leader with the skills, knowledge and strong record of success that we had sought for this key position on our leadership team,” said Harry R. Jacobson, M.D., vice chancellor for Health Affairs. “We're glad to have found him, we look forward to his contributions and we ask that everyone join us in welcoming Larry to VUMC.”
The top job at VUH was last occupied by Mark Penkhus, who left in 2002. The position was held open until after the opening of the Monroe Carell Jr. Children's Hospital at Vanderbilt and the refurbishment of the vacated children's space in VUH. Norman Urmy, executive vice president for Clinical Affairs, has pulled double duty, managing VUH while also leading the larger VUMC clinical enterprise. Urmy echoed Jacobson's satisfaction with Goldberg's appointment.
“I think he's just who we need. I think he's terrific.”
An executive search firm provided a list of 15 candidates, which Jacobson and Urmy whittled to six. Five came for interviews with the VUMC executive team — all had experience in academic health centers.
Three candidates were invited back for additional interviews with the executive team and with selected department chairs, hospital administrators, patient care center administrators and additional VUMC academic and research leaders.
Urmy asked Goldberg back for a daylong discussion. “This final meeting was an opportunity to drill down on the question of whether he was going to fit in at Vanderbilt. This is a very collaborative place and an extremely complex institution, very physician-driven, where clinical services are performed in concert with education and research. In Larry, we knew we had a leading candidate with the right skills, and we knew that he had been very successful at Northwestern. By the time we offered him the position, we had also assured ourselves of having found a leader who is very well suited to our institution and its organizational culture.
“Larry was the consensus choice for the job after the first round of interviews and he remained the choice through all the subsequent interviews and reference checking. I welcome him to Vanderbilt and look forward to working with him,” Urmy said.
Northwestern Memorial Hospital is the primary teaching affiliate for Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. The hospital serves over 40,000 admissions and 290,000 outpatient registrations annually, with a medical staff of 1,250 physicians and 450 house staff.
“What attracted me to this opportunity is the longstanding tradition of excellence and success that Vanderbilt has attained,” Goldberg said. “It is an outstanding institution with great people and a great vision and I am looking forward to becoming a part of this already respected academic medical center."
Before joining Northwestern in 1998, Goldberg spent several years in New York in the health care consulting practices of Deloitte & Touche and Ernst & Young.
Goldberg was born and raised near Philadelphia, has a bachelor's degree from the University of North Carolina and a master's in health administration from Duke University.