AURORA | Two top officials who played key roles in building University of Colorado Health, one of the state’s biggest health care providers, will step down early next year.
UCHealth President Rulon Stacey and CEO Bruce Schroffel announced Friday that they would be stepping down Jan. 31 with Bill Neff, UCHealth’s Chief Medical Officer serving serve as interim president and CEO starting Oct. 1.
“Bruce and Rulon have shown incredible leadership and vision as they have literally built the UCHealth system from the very beginning,” UCHealth Board of Directors and Chairman Dick Monfort said in the statement. “Their direction has redefined high quality health care, and patients throughout the Rocky Mountain region and across the nation have benefitted from what they and their teams have created. The Board and I are incredibly thankful for their service, and we will soon begin the difficult task of finding a new president and CEO to lead UCHealth.”
Stacey and Schroffel’s positions will combined into a single position and officials said they will launch a national search to find that replacement.
The past two years have seen substantial changes for the hospital system, including the January 2012 merger of University of Colorado Hospital and Poudre Valley Health System.
That merger saw UCH join Poudre Hospital in Fort Collins, Medical Center of the Rockies in Loveland and their affiliated clinics. Ivinson Memorial in Laramie, Wyo., was included as an affiliate of UCHealth.
In October 2012, UCHealth added Memorial Central Hospital in Colorado Springs and Memorial North Hospital in northern Colorado Springs.
“Creating UCHealth has been one of the proudest moments of my career,” Schroffel, who is retiring, said in the statement. “I’m even more convinced today than when we first started these conversations in 2010 that not only was creating UCHealth the right thing to do, it’s the best thing for patients along the Front Range. Now it’s time to turn the reigns over to a new kind of leadership to grow the system.”
Stacey said: “I have made sure UCHealth is unyielding in our focus on providing the very highest quality patient care while also focusing on efficiencies which will make us better able to face the health care challenges of tomorrow. I’m confident that patients and our staff members are better cared for today than before we formed UCHealth. I’ll now be looking for exciting new opportunities, perhaps continuing to prepare for the future of health care.”
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