Emory Report

Feb. 15, 1999

Volume 51, No. 20

Emory Healthcare's new president and COO arrives April 15 John Fox, executive vice president of Clarian Health, Indianapolis, has been named president and chief operating officer of Emory Healthcare, effective April 15. This is a new position, created last year after Emory Healthcare completed extensive integrated strategic planning and underwent major restructuring, fully integrating The Emory Clinic into the health care system and adding the Wesley Woods Center and a new joint venture with Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corp. Fox will work alongside Executive Vice President for Health Affairs Michael Johns to direct the critical analysis, enhancement and successful implementation of this systemwide health care strategic plan and to design and assess new strategic plans. "John Fox's arrival at Emory marks another major step in our continuing evolution as a highly integrated, smoothly functioning health care system that will remain the regional leader in health care delivery while supporting the Woodruff Health Sciences Center's missions of education, research and patient care," Johns said. "John is exactly the pivotal change agent we wanted at this time in our history. He has an enormous breadth of experience with both academic and community health care, and he knows how to work with other people to set and meet organizational goals." This will not be Fox's first experience as a "pivotal change agent." Clarian Health is a relatively new organization, established in 1997, the product of a series of mergers and acquisitions with which Fox was deeply involved over the previous decade. Fox first joined the Methodist Health Group, a precursor of Clarian, in 1989. At the time Methodist consisted of a 1,000-bed hospital and two smaller subsidiary hospitals. One of Fox's first challenges was turning around a newly acquired HMO/group practice that had lost $8.5 million the previous year but is now profitable. Fox moved up the corporate ladder from senior vice president to executive vice president as Methodist Health Group evolved and expanded as a health care system. In 1997 it merged with Indiana University Medical School's Indiana University Hospital and with Riley Children's Hospital. "Emory Healthcare is in an outstanding position to lead health care delivery in the Southeast," Fox said. "As we move ahead, our continued emphasis needs to be on quality, service and cost. Despite all the confusion in the current environment, those three variables will ultimately determine our success in the marketplace." Born in Ontario, Canada, Fox received his bachelor's degree in economics and history at Washington University in St. Louis in 1974 and his MBA in finance at the University of Cincinnati in 1977. After graduation he worked for the consulting firm Coopers & Lybrand and was senior vice president and chief financial officer at Scioto Valley Health Foundation Inc. in Portsmouth, Ohio, for four years. From 1985 to 1987, he was senior vice president at Mercy Health Center of Central Iowa. He later spent two years as vice president and chief financial officer at The Johns Hopkins Hospital, where he worked closely with Johns. --Traci Simmons Return to Feb. 15, 1999, contents page