Tom Zenty’s February retirement from his post as University Hospitals Health System (UHHS)’s president and CEO was a decade in the making. In 2010, he and the board decided that in 2016, he would begin the process of identifying and grooming a successor from within the organization.
“It was so well planned. The board was so actively engaged, and we had so many great candidates to fill the role that I just felt that it was the right time,” Zenty, a 65-year-old Pennsylvania native, recalls as he sits in his West Palm Beach, Florida, condominium. “After a couple of decades, no one wants to be Methuselah.”
Leaving the health system during a pandemic — one that had in many cases stretched other counterparts’ ability to care for a massive influx of COVID-19 sufferers to their absolute limits — didn’t keep him up at night. Careful planning with Cleveland Clinic and other area providers assured him that Northeast Ohio was prepared to handle the patient volume seen in other areas of the country. It was a collaborative effort he’d never seen in his career.
“We [alone] could have scaled up to 5,600 beds literally within 24 to 48 hours,” he says. In fact, the only thing that really troubled him was that the pandemic prevented him from saying goodbye in person to UHHS’s nearly 30,000 employees at the half-yearly open forums he spent six weeks of every six months conducting. It is perhaps because he voices only that single regret that he’s able to recount accomplishments with satisfaction and move on to the next chapter of his life.
“There’s no doubt that I have an emotional attachment to the organization,” he says. “It’s such an important part of the community. It’s such an important part of the great work that’s done in health care in Northeast Ohio, being nationally ranked in so many arenas and growing. … It really became a part of my DNA.”
When Zenty arrived at UHHS in 2003 after 10 years as executive vice president at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, he found an organization with a dedicated workforce, strong leadership team, committed board and tremendous community support in one of the world’s best health care centers. However, it wasn’t financially positioned to best fulfill its mission.
“When you have an organization like ours that is focused on research, teaching and clinical care, it’s critically important to be able to earn a margin so that you’ll be able to respond to all three of those domains,” he explains.
The health system made the difficult decision to close St. Michael Hospital, an underutilized facility that, according to news reports at the time, had an average daily patient occupancy of less than 25%. It sold QualChoice, its health insurance company, and divested itself of holdings in entities providing services that Zenty says “weren’t core to our mission at the time” or could be provided in a different setting — physical therapy and optometry, for example.
“We reinvested all of that into providing care for the community in a number of ways,” Zenty says.
The health system began opening what Zenty estimates is now 50 major ambulatory centers across Northeast Ohio. Indeed, he believes the biggest challenges facing UHHS include increasing access to health care across the nation and continuing to adapt to the move from inpatient to outpatient and home care.
At the same time, the health system expanded its primary care footprint. In 2011, it consolidated cancer care offerings scattered across its University Circle campus in the new Seidman Cancer Center and finally opened a hospital on Cleveland’s suburban East Side: Ahuja Medical Center in Beachwood. Today, many of the ambulatory and primary care facilities, both new and existing, offer specialty cancer, cardiac and pediatric care often available only at a medical center’s main campus.
“We brought our branded services that were the more complex services closer to where our community lives,” Zenty says.
Under Zenty’s leadership, UHHS also strengthened its ties to Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine by formalizing its relationship as a primary academic multiaffiliate and finding more ways to work together — collaborating on basic research, for example, and financially supporting the school in some of its endeavors. He notes that the number of donors in the health system’s database has increased from approximately 7,500 to almost 90,000, providing more than $2 billion in philanthropic support during the past 14 years.
One of the most meaningful developments to Zenty is the dramatic increase in management and leadership positions that have been filled internally, an accomplishment spurred in part by a Leadership Institute program that began seven or eight years ago. He estimates that when he arrived, roughly 15% to 20% of open positions were filled by employee promotions. Now, that number is approaching 80%.
“When we have 80% of our people who share our mission, our vision, our values, our commitment to the patients we serve, our commitment to the community — if you find people who share that vision, and you promote them from within, it’s the only way to perpetuate the kind of organization and the culture that I’ve been describing,” he says.
Zenty says he’s also proud of the quality of care UHHS provides to its patients, as well as the organization’s recognition by the Ethisphere Institute as one of the world’s most ethical companies for eight consecutive years.
While he has retired from UHHS, he continues to work as a general partner in a private equity firm and an executive-in-residence at a venture capital firm, both of which he describes as “compelling opportunities” that will utilize his experience in health care.
At press time, Zenty was completing a yearlong update of a West Palm Beach, Florida, condominium, “a light renovation [that] turned into a total renovation.
“I’m just learning the area,” he says. “It’s a beautiful location. I’m just going to see whether or not I really enjoy living down south.”
He hasn’t left the area permanently — he’s still maintaining his Shaker Heights abode. He notes that he’s lived in Northeast Ohio longer than anywhere else in his entire life.
“That really is my home,” he says.