Paul Viviano will step down as chairman and chief executive of Newport Beach-based Alliance HealthCare Services Inc. to lead the University of California, San Diego Health System.
Alliance provides doctors and hospitals with scanning services, including magnetic resource imaging and diagnostic services. It also runs radiation-treatment centers for cancer patients.
Viviano will become chief executive of the UCSD Health System and also take the title of associate vice chancellor for health sciences at the school, with an annual salary of $720,000, according to officials there.
He will remain with Alliance until June.
“This was a very difficult decision for me, but ultimately it was time for me to return to academic medicine,” Viviano said in a statement.
Alliance designated director Larry Buckelew as interim chief executive and board chairman. The company offered no indication on a search for a permanent hire.
Vivian’s new post will put him in charge of a health system with annual operating revenue of $940 million and 5,500 workers, 700 affiliated doctors and an expanding hospital network.
UCSD just broke ground on the Jacobs Medical Center, a $664 million, 10-story facility next to its Thornton Hospital in La Jolla. The Jacobs center is expected to open in 2016, and UCSD has said it plans to renovate its UC San Diego Medical Center in Hillcrest afterward.
Viviano has an extensive background in hospital administration. He was chief executive of USC University Hospital and USC/Norris Cancer Hospital in Los Angeles from 2000 to 2002. He previously spent 13 years with Orange-based Catholic hospital operator St. Joseph Health System.
• Headquarters: Newport Beach
• Business: medical imaging and diagnostic services
• Founded: 1983
• Ticker symbol: AIQ (NYSE)
• Market value: about $73 million
• Notable: Chairman and Chief Executive Paul Viviano leaving for job overseeing UC San Diego Health System
Viviano had been with Alliance since 2003 and was only the company’s second chief executive since its inception in 1983. He said that he was “confident that Alliance will continue to achieve success with its restructuring plan.”
Alliance has some $500 million in annual revenue but has seen a rugged ride through the recession extend into the ongoing recovery.
“Healthcare services demand and volumes have been [affected] by the terrible cycle of the recession and near recession-like trends,” Viviano said last year at an investor conference in New York.
He said that high unemployment, reduced office visits, closer scrutiny from health insurers, and higher patient deductibles and co-payments as factors working against the company.
The company laid out a recovery plan in late 2011, when its shares more fell more than 70%.
The plan included a goal of cutting $25 million in annual expenses.
Alliance has made some progress, and its shares are up 20% so far this year with a recent market value of about $73 million.
Alliance also announced that it has appointed Michael Shea as chief operating officer, effective June 4. Shea was previously a senior vice president at DaVita Inc., a Denver-based operator of kidney dialysis centers.
Alliance, in an unrelated development, said that Richard Hall submitted his resignation as president of Alliance’s Alliance Oncology unit to take a job as a chief executive of an unidentified, non-competing, New York-based company.
