Windsor
“It was a really hard decision to make,” Donovan said in an interview. “It was a great professional opportunity for me.”
He said the new position also will be closer to the Concord area, where he has four children in high school.
Donovan was tapped to fill the top job at Laconia, N.H.-based LRGHealthcare after the job’s previous permanent occupant left after about six months. Donovan was a finalist in the previous search, and the health system’s directors turned quickly to him when his predecessor resigned, according to a release from LRGHealthcare.
During Donovan’s six-year tenure, Mt. Ascutney faced financial pressures, refocused on rehabilitation services and formalized a relationship that gave key levers of control to Dartmouth-Hitchcock, a larger, Lebanon-based system.
Mt. Ascutney, which has 25 acute care and 10 rehabilitation beds, recently closed its nursing home and spent $6.5 million to provide private rooms to all its patients. Most of Mt. Ascutney’s rehabilitation patients now come from D-H, which has 396 beds, and is shifting its focus to specialized and higher-margin services.
An affiliation deal completed in 2014 made D-H the sole corporate member of Mt. Ascutney, with final say over the smaller nonprofit organization’s board membership, executive leadership, strategy and finances.
The hospital’s shift to lower margin services also was followed by operating losses in fiscal 2014 and 2015. The operating budget for the current year projects a tiny operating profit of about $50,000. “We turned things around,” Donovan said.
Donovan will give up the reins at Mt. Ascutney, which has annual revenue of about $50 million, and take over at LRGHealthcare, a Laconia health system that includes two hospitals with 162 beds and has posted annual revenue of nearly $220 million.
Donovan will take over in the wake of recent changes including the unexpected March 15 announcement that a previous CEO had resigned for personal reasons after about six months on the job. Two weeks later the hospital said 58 employees would be affected by “staff reductions.” Last year Franklin Regional Hospital opened a 10-bed psychiatric unit.
Donovan said the new hospital would benefit from committed leadership based on engagement with communities and employees and putting the organization on solid financial footing.
In 2013, Donovan’s compensation at Mt. Ascutney totaled $334,000, including $327,000 he was paid as an employee of Dartmouth-Hitchock. Donovan said that his pay was in the lowest quartile of Vermont hospital chiefs, and that he would be comfortable being in a similar position in his new job, but declined to provide further details.
In 2013, former LRGHealthcare Chief Executive Thomas Clairmont got paid $575,000.
An LRGHealthcare spokeswoman said she had no information about Donovan’s compensation package.
Donovan’s move, scheduled for June 15, will be the second vacancy to appear this year atop the organization chart of an Upper Valley critical access hospital. In February, Gifford Medical Center Chief Executive Joe Woodin announced his departure to take over a Massachusetts hospital.
Critical access hospitals have 25 or fewer beds, provide care in designated underserved areas and get compensated at higher-than-normal rates by Medicare for services.