Ellis CEO Connolly announces retirement

After eight years leading Ellis Medicine and its 2,800 employees, president and CEO James Connolly announced Thursday he was retiring from the Schenectady-based hospital system.

The retirement was effective immediately. The Board of Trustees appointed Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Paul Milton acting president and CEO while it considers a national and internal search for Connolly’s permanent replacement.

“My time at Ellis, working with exceptionally talented physicians, nurses, staff and community leaders, has been one of the most professionally challenging and rewarding experiences of my career,” Connolly said in a statement. “I am very proud of what we have built together: a strong, integrated, financially secure, forward-looking health care system accessible to the entire community.”

Milton has more than two decades of experience in senior health care leadership roles. He joined Ellis as COO in 2008. Previously, he had served as COO of The Norwalk Hospital in Connecticut and COO of Northeast Health in Troy, where he helped in the merger of Albany Memorial and Samaritan hospitals. He also served as vice president of administration at Middlesex Hospital and vice president of operations at The Stamford Health Care Corporation, both in Connecticut. He also served as a community health care coordinator with the U.S. Peace Corps in Malawi, Africa.

“Jim has done a great job here,” Milton said. “He’s done a lot of wonderful things at Ellis, and Ellis is actually in a very good spot. I feel fortunate to step into a position where everything is in really good shape. I think it will be a seamless transition.”

Connolly, a Long Island native who lives in Saratoga Springs, was named president and CEO of Ellis Hospital in February 2007 and took over the next month, succeeding Robert Smanik. He kicked off his Ellis tenure at an interesting time in local and national health care, just a few years before President Obama’s signature Affordable Care Act would become law and send shock waves that are still reverberating through the health care industry.

His tenure also started just months after the state’s Berger Commission recommended that Ellis merge with St. Clare’s Hospital in Schenectady and that Bellevue Woman’s Hospital in Niskayuna close. Over the next several years, he helped stave off Bellevue’s closure after much community outcry and instead oversaw the merger of all three hospitals under a single governing entity today known as Ellis Medicine.

The consolidation was no easy task. Local hospital leaders had to convince the state to help bail out St. Clare’s $34 million unfunded pension obligation and to help with the costs associated with the consolidation, including debt, employee severance and some operating costs. They also had to ease public worries that a consolidation would affect the level of services provided in some city neighborhoods.

He also oversaw the hospital system through several massive capital projects, including a $61 million emergency room expansion and modernization project at the hospital’s Nott Street campus, a $17 million addition at Bellevue, and a new $13 million urgent care center in Clifton Park that expanded the hospital’s market into fast-growing southern Saratoga County, a coveted market for health care organizations.

Last summer, Connolly teamed up with St. Peter’s Health Partners President and CEO James Reed to announce a new regional alliance that would allow them to participate in a federal program designed to improve care for Medicare beneficiaries in the region and capture savings along the way. They received federal approval last month to establish the region’s first Accountable Care Organization — Innovative Health Alliance of New York.

Connolly and the entire Ellis management team have come under fire several times in recent years for their perceived intractability during contract negotiations with the New York State Nurses Association. Nurses have called them out for refusing to consider safe-staffing guidelines and for below-average wages.

The most recent federal tax filings show Connolly earned $630,545 as president and CEO in 2012.

Prior to his tenure with Ellis, Connolly served as president and CEO of Mercy Hospital in Buffalo from 1996 to 1999, and then as senior vice president of its parent company, Catholic Health System, from 2000 to 2001. That year, he was named COO at Glens Falls Hospital, where he served prior to being named Ellis CEO.

Connolly graduated from Hamilton College in Central New York and earned a master’s degree in business administration from the Columbia University School of Business and a master’s degree in public health from Columbia’s School of Public Health, both in New York City.

Ellis Board of Trustees Chairwoman Deborah Mullaney described his replacement as a “talented, hands-on leader” who has a good relationship with physicians, staff, patients and the community.

“Jim Connolly has been an excellent leader for Ellis Medicine and our community,” she said in a statement. “He has led transformative change in our local health care landscape, with an unwavering focus on delivering the very best care in the most efficient way and creating a healthier community. His efforts to ensure Ellis’ financial strength and to establish close relationships with our community will benefit the people we serve for years to come.”

Categories: Business, News