Phelps Memorial Hospital Center President and CEO Keith F. Safian has chosen to end his 25-year tenure in Sleepy Hollow as the hospital prepares to affiliate this year with the metropolitan North Shore-LIJ Health System as its parent organization.
Phelps directors announced they accepted Safian”™s resignation “with regret” at the board”™s Oct. 22 meeting. Safian, who joined Phelps in 1989, will step down as of Nov. 30.
Daniel Blum, senior vice president at Phelps since 2009, will succeed Safian as president.
With an affiliation agreement with North Shore-LIJ expected to be signed soon, Safian decided it was an appropriate time to step down as the 238-bed community hospital transitions to the partnership, Phelps officials said in the announcement.
Richard Sinni, Phelps board chairman, expressed the board”™s “sincere appreciation” to Safian for the institution”™s growth over his 25-year tenure and for his leadership, which he said has made Phelps one of the most clinically sophisticated and consistently profitable community hospitals in the Hudson Valley region.
The hospital was $4.7 million in the black at the end of 2013, Safian told the Business Journal last May, when the agreement to explore joining North Shore-LIJ, New York state”™s largest private employer and its largest integrated health care provider, was announced.
“Keith rescued Phelps from the verge of bankruptcy in 1989,” said Sinni, “and the fiscal performance he achieved thereafter has enabled the hospital to provide the highest level of medical care to the communities it serves.”
Hospital officials said the Phelps operating budget has increased from $40 million to $240 million during Safian”™s administration, while the number of physicians on staff rose from 200 to 500 and the number of hospital employees grew from 800 to 1,700, making Phelps the seventh largest employer in Westchester County. The hospital campus expanded with the addition of two medical services buildings, a 750-space parking garage and a new, expanded emergency department. A 20,000-square-foot surgical operating suite for hospitalized patients and outpatients will open this year in a medical office building connected to the main hospital by an enclosed bridge.
Hospital directors noted that Safian also began the establishment of the hospital”™s multispecialty medical group, Phelps Medical Associates, which has grown to include 40 physicians in 14 practice locations in surrounding communities.
Phelps under his leadership also ranks among the top 3 percent of hospitals in the U.S. in receiving the highest designation by the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society for its electronic medical records system, according to Phelps officials.
During Safian”™s tenure, Phelps became a teaching hospital with the creation of residency training programs for family medicine and dental residents in partnership with New York Medical College in Valhalla and Open Door Family Medical Centers.
Phelps officials also have credited Safian with the hospital”™s move in 1995 to affiliate with Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. The Sleepy Hollow hospital was the first site outside Manhattan for Sloan Kettering”™s radiation therapy and medical oncology services for outpatients. Memorial Sloan Kettering in October opened a second Westchester location in West Harrison.
Safian in May said the cancer center will continue to operate on the 69-acre Phelps campus under multiyear leases when the North Shore-LIJ deal is completed, although the center”™s future is uncertain when those leases expire.
Citing the CEO”™s key business decisions when celebrating Safian’s 25th anniversary in the job last June, Phelps officials also pointed to the hospital”™s leasing of 21 acres for the Kendal on the Hudson development, a nonprofit continuing care retirement community overlooking the Hudson River.
Safian in an email to the Business Journal declined to comment on his resignation and future plans at this time.
