CEO steps aside at Madera Community Hospital. Who will lead as it looks to reopen?
Madera Community Hospital, closed since January 2023, has a new head executive as it attempts to stay on track for a reopening sometime before the end of the year.
The hospital’s Board of Trustees on Wednesday named Steve Stark as the new CEO. His experience includes executive leadership at three California hospitals: Orchard Hospital in Gridley, Glenn Medical Center in Willows and Colusa Medical Center. All three are also managed by American Advanced Management Inc., the healthcare firm in charge of reopening Madera’s shuttered facility.
“I’m honored that the board selected me,” Stark said in a Thursday news release from AAM. “Madera is a wonderful city, and I’m excited to serve the community.”
Stark holds master’s degrees in hospital administration and organizational performance, according to the release.
“My focus as a CEO is to provide the highest level of quality, safety and experience for our patients and community,” he said.
With Stark’s appointment to the hospital’s highest executive office, former CEO Karen Paolinelli will be stepping down from her years-long leadership role but will still be helping AAM reopen the facility “on a contract basis,” the release said.
Paolinelli became the hospital’s interim head executive in November 2017, according to her LinkedIn page, and stayed on as CEO until now. She was at Madera hospital’s helm when it closed last year, leaving a largely low-income Latino community without an acute care facility for adults.
The former CEO took the brunt of public criticism over the hospital’s financial collapse after the COVID-19 pandemic, which included about $30 million in debt. Paolinelli explained the financial struggles as a result of the hospital’s high number of patients who benefit from Medi-Cal, the state’s insurance program for low-income people that hospitals often criticize as having low reimbursement rates for the care they provide.
She stayed on staff during the hospital’s long federal bankruptcy proceedings, which included decisions by Adventist Health and Fresno-based Saint Agnes Medical Center to pull out of conversations about a potential takeover of Madera’s facility. Adventist Health tried during the latest days of the bankruptcy proceedings to partner with UC San Francisco to buy Madera hospital, but a federal judge authorized a takeover by AAM, which is known to buy and reopen failed rural hospitals.
Paolinelli told The Fresno Bee during a Madera hospital reopening town hall last month that she would be staying on in an executive role after reopening.
“There was recognition organization-wide that we needed a fresh face,” Matthew Beehler, AAM’s spokesperson, told The Bee on Thursday. “(Paolinelli) will be stepping down but will still be available on a consulting basis.”
The change in leadership at Madera hospital follows the creation of a mostly new Board of Trustees and the decision to create a community advisory committee consisting of Madera County residents.
The hospital has been receiving a makeover for months, and Beehler said it is on track to reopen in the fourth quarter of this year — if AAM can continue to avoid large setbacks. The firm is still working on obtaining its pharmaceutical licensing, and plans to hold a job fair to begin hiring staff during the first half of September, he told The Bee.
The best-case scenario would be an October reopening, “if our supply of employees is strong and we have no difficulty filling big positions,” he said.
AAM previously announced that it will be reopening without a maternity ward, and Beehler told The Bee last month that AAM has never added a maternity ward to one of the facilities it has reopened, such as Coalinga Regional Medical Center. He said AAM operates a mix of long-term acute care facilities and short-term acute care facilities, which are in smaller rural areas and do not have the population draw to support a pregnancy care program.
“For Madera, the volume exists,” he said last month. “It’s about: How do we start the hospital off on a strong financial footing and develop that service in a sustainable way so that we’re not looking at closing that service line due to financial burdens on the hospital a couple years down the road?”
This story was originally published August 15, 2024 at 3:42 PM.
