The incoming interim head of UCI Medical Center is a veteran who’s run big hospitals in Long Beach and Orange.
Terry Belmont is set to start at UCI Medical Center in March, when current Chief Executive Maureen Zehntner retires from the Orange teaching hospital run by the University of California, Irvine.
Belmont comes from Long Beach Memorial Medical Center and Miller Children’s Hospital, where he’s been chief executive since 2006.
In November, Belmont announced plans to leave Long Beach Memorial after handling projects such as a transition to electronic medical records and an expansion of Miller Children’s Hospital.
His last day at Long Beach Memorial is Jan. 15.
The hospital is run by Fountain Valley-based MemorialCare Medical Centers, which also has facilities in Fountain Valley, Anaheim, Laguna Beach and San Clemente.
Belmont is expected to be in the running for the permanent chief executive post at UCI Medical.
The hospital, the county’s second largest after Newport Beach’s Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian, plans to continue a national search for a top executive.
Earlier in Belmont’s career, he ran St. Joseph Hospital-Orange , the county’s No. 3 hospital, and worked for Oakland-based Kaiser Permanente in San Diego and the Inland Empire.
Word of Belmont’s appointment at UCI came this week as part of news that David Bailey, the school’s vice chancellor for health affairs and medical school dean, plans to leave July 1.
Bailey, who arrived at UC Irvine in 2007, made his announcement in an e-mail to staffers. He said he believed that the university “will now benefit from leadership that can garner a higher level of faculty consensus and support for the next steps in our evolution.”
Under Bailey’s leadership, UCI completed a hospital to replace its aging facility in Orange, completed a strategic alliance with Children’s Hospital of Orange County and recruited department chairs, among other things.
Bailey, a pathologist, has spent 32 years with the University of California system. Before coming to UCI, he was with the University of California, San Diego, for 30 years.
