Orange-based St. Joseph Health System, which runs three of the largest hospitals in the county, has hired a 40-year-old pediatrician and healthcare administrator as its new chief operating officer.
Andrew Agwunobi, who goes by “Dr. Andy,” replaces Jeffery Flocken, who left St. Joseph in June. Agwunobi comes to St. Joseph from Grady Health System in Atlanta, where he oversaw a turnaround of the hospital and clinic operator as chief executive since 2003.
He’s set to start at St. Joseph on Jan. 2.
Agwunobi’s arrival is the second big change within St. Joseph’s executive ranks in the past year.
Chief Executive Deborah Proctor took over late last year for longtime leader Richard Statuto, who now is chief executive of Bon Secours Health System Inc. in Marriottsville, Md.
In a release, Proctor said Agwunobi has “the operational expertise to serve as a strategic partner for our local hospital CEOs.”
Proctor was an attraction for Agwunobi, he said: “She’s a person who has both the personality and the smarts, basically, the competence that separates the good leaders from the great leaders.”
St. Joseph, a Catholic not-for-profit, runs three of the top hospitals by patient revenue in Orange County: St. Joseph Hospital of Orange, St. Jude Medical Center in Fullerton and Mission Viejo’s Mission Hospital Regional Medical Center Inc.
Agwunobi, who is Catholic, told newspapers in Atlanta that he was attracted to the philosophy of St. Joseph, a commitment to “dignity, service and justice.”
St. Joseph has 14 hospitals in all and $3 billion in yearly revenue. It has 18,000 workers and more than 1,500 affiliated doctors.
The operation has its roots in the Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange, who started a small hospital in Northern California in the 1920s.
“The core values of the health system and of the sisters are ones that resonate with my personal values, and the values that I’ve lived every day as a healthcare administrator,” Agwunobi said.
St. Joseph found Agwunobi through a nationwide search.
Besides Grady, Agwunobi’s background includes practicing pediatrics, running a clinical service in Boston and running a Tenet Healthcare Corp. hospital.
That background makes him “feel well-rounded enough to be able to quickly come up to speed to what is needed at St. Joseph Health System in a chief operating officer,” he said.
Agwunobi’s challenge at Grady, one of the largest public health systems in the Southeast, was to get it out of a deep financial hole.
Grady hired Agwunobi in 2003 from South Fulton Medical Center, a hospital owned by Tenet Healthcare.
In his time at Grady, Agwunobi cut the hospital’s debt from $60 million down to a projected $8 million to $10 million. Changes included layoffs, getting more of Grady’s patients into government health insurance plans and raising the price of prescription drugs.
Agwunobi laid off more than 200 workers, denied services to uninsured patients who lived outside Fulton and DeKalb counties and took other cost-saving measures.
Grady includes two hospitals and 10 neighborhood clinics. It operates with a $635 million budget that mainly is made up of county, state and federal funds.
Agwunobi generally received high marks during his time there. But Grady still faced some issues. Back in August, federal officials threatened to cut $300 million in funding, or about half of the hospital system’s annual budget, because of what were characterized as “immediate and serious” threats to patient health and safety found at the hospital.
Grady eventually put a system in place to review possible medical errors, and the government withdrew its complaint.
Agwunobi received his medical degree from the University of Jos in Nigeria. His father, a physician, is from Nigeria.
He did his postgraduate work in pediatrics at Howard University in Washington, D.C., and earned a master’s of business administration from Stanford University in 2001.
Agwunobi grew up in Strathmiglo, a small village in Scotland.
He came to the U.S. in 1992. He’s married to Dr. Elizabeth Agwunobi, an internist who he met during his pediatric residency training at Howard.
The couple has two young daughters and is in the process of moving to OC.
