Wyckoff Heights Medical Center has dismissed its chief executive officer for the second time in six months, appointing Steve Nathan as interim CEO to manage the hospital during its continuing restructuring.
Nathan, a former senior executive for FTI Cambio, has led several turnaround projects including Wishard Health Services and Methodist Hospitals of Gary, Ind. FTI Cambio is a division of FTI Healthcare, which specializes in health care consulting and financial advising
Before working at FTI Cambio, Nathan was the CEO of American Red Cross Blood Service in Florida and was the Chief Operating Officer of Jackson Memorial Hospital and COO of Parkland Memorial Hospital. Nathan, currently serving as the interim CEO to WHMC, could not be reached for comment by the time this article went to press.
On July 18, former interim CEO Nirmal Mattoo resigned from his post. Mattoo, Wyckoff Hospital’s former chief medical director, who specializes in internal medicine and nephrology, retains privileges at the hospital, though he has not been seen on hospital grounds since his dismissal and did not attend the hospital’s health fair on July 19.
Mattoo will likely return to running Atlantic Dialysis Management, a network of dialysis centers throughout Brooklyn and Queens, of which he is also the CEO. It is unclear if he will take patients he saw at Wyckoff with him to a different hospital. Mattoo was unable to be reached for comment.
Much of the future direction of the hospital (374 Stockholm Street) will be in the hands of Nathan, Chief Brooklyn Queens Health Care Restructuring Officer Tom Singleton, who hired Nathan, and the current Chief Medical Director Bushan Khashu. Khashu, a Urologist with Wyckoff Heights Medical Center who has been meeting with community members in North Brooklyn over issues such as improving Emergency Room wait times, resolving a shortage of parking spaces in the streets around the hospital, and improving language translation services for patients speaking native languages other than English.
Several other mid-level officials at the hospital have left in recent weeks, though a spokesperson for Wyckoff Heights said that the departures were unrelated to the interim CEO’s dismissal. Among those leaving include the vice president of registered nursing, Renee Mauriello, and the hospital is currently interview a slate of candidates for the position.
Over the past 18 months, the hospital has been restructured into three corporations: Caritas, which encompasses St. John’s Queens and Mary Immaculate Hospital, Wyckoff Heights Medical Center, and BQHC, the passive parent of Wyckoff and Caritas. As the parent company of Wyckoff, BQHC appoints the board of trustees for both Wyckoff and Caritas. Wyckoff Heights Medical Center created BQHC in 2006, as five members of the executive committee at Wyckoff moved to form the BQHC Board, which is now self-perpetuating.
The hospital’s previous CEO, Dominick Gio, led Wyckoff Heights for the past ten years, before leaving the position in late February this year during the medical center’s restructuring.
