CHI Appoints Robert J. Weil as SVP, Chief Medical Officer

Robert J. Weil, M.D., has been appointed senior vice president and chief medical officer for Englewood, Colo.-based Catholic Health Initiatives, the nation’s third-largest health system.

Weil, who will join CHI in September, is coming from Geisinger Health System, where he has served in several roles, including: chief medical executive in northeastern Pennsylvania; associate chief scientific officer for clinical and translational research for the system; and as medical director of care support services, the system’s enterprise supply chain and pharmacy division.

In his role at CHI, Weil will provide strategic clinical and cultural leadership to ensure the delivery of high-quality, cost-effective and patient-centered care across CHI’s national health care ministry in 18 states. He replaces Stephen Moore, M.D., who became chief medical officer at CHI St. Luke’s Health in Houston in 2015.

“We are absolutely thrilled to have such a distinguished clinician and scientist join CHI,” said Michael Rowan, CHI’s president of health system delivery and chief operating officer. “Dr. Weil has many years of experience in clinical and translational research at one of the most respected health systems in the world. He’ll help take our clinical care and quality to the next level.”

A neurosurgeon, Weil, 55, will partner with Kathy Sanford, CHI’s senior vice president and chief nursing officer, to focus on quality, safety and care delivery. Among other responsibilities, he will manage clinical service lines, the physician enterprise, and CHI’s Institute for Research and Innovation (CIRI).

“It’s exciting to join an organization with the scope and scale of Catholic Health Initiatives,” said Weil. “The national health care ministry has a well-established emphasis on providing the very best care to its patients. I’m looking forward to contributing to this focus on better, more-efficient care that can be replicated and spread across the system – and the entire nation.”

At Geisinger, Weil focused on providing high quality care more affordably, bringing new service lines to create regional programs in a variety of medical disciplines. In addition, he oversaw the expansion of trauma and critical care services throughout the Northeast, while maintaining and enhancing fiscal growth.

Prior to joining Geisinger, Weil was a staff physician and surgeon at the Cleveland Clinic, where he was president of Lakewood Hospital in Lakewood, Ohio, part of the Cleveland Clinic Health System. Weil graduated from Yale College and received his medical degree, with honors, from the University of Missouri.

He is certified by the American Board of Neurological Surgery, a Fellow of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons (FAANS), and a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons (FACS). Weil continues to do research and to publish actively, with more than 230 peer-reviewed articles and two books. Most recently his focus is in health-services research and how to enhance the quality and safety of medical care delivery.

About Catholic Health Initiatives: Catholic Health Initiatives, a nonprofit, faith-based health system formed in 1996 through the consolidation of four Catholic health systems, expresses its mission each day by creating and nurturing healthy communities in the hundreds of sites across the nation where we provide care. The nation’s third-largest nonprofit health system, Englewood, Colorado-based CHI operates in 18 states and comprises 103 hospitals, including four academic health centers and major teaching hospitals as well as 30 critical-access facilities; community health-services organizations; accredited nursing colleges; home-health agencies; living communities; and other facilities and services that span the inpatient and outpatient continuum of care. In fiscal year 2015, CHI provided almost $970 million in charity care and community benefit – an 8% increase over the previous year -- for programs and services for the poor, free clinics, education and research. Charity care and community benefit totaled more than $1.6 billion with the inclusion of the unpaid costs of Medicare. The health system, which generated operating revenues of $15.2 billion in fiscal year 2015, has total assets of approximately $23 billion. Learn more at www.catholichealthinitiatives.org.