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Covenant Health System Names Clark as new President, CEO
St. Joseph Health System Chief Operating Officer Joe Randolph and Covenant Health System board of directors announced today that Melinda Clark has been selected president and chief executive officer of Covenant Health System.
Clark currently serves as president and chief operating officer of the Lubbock hospitals. She will succeed Steven L. Hunter, who accepted the CEO position at Provena Health in Chicago, Ill., in April.
"We are delighted to have a person with Melinda's capabilities," said Joe Randolph, COO of St. Joseph Health System. "After working with Melinda during the transition period since Steve told us he was going to leave Covenant, the Covenant board, under the leadership of Chairman Kevin McMahon, believed that conducting a nationwide search would have ended with the same results as today's decision."
As president and CEO, Clark will oversee the entire Covenant Health System, including Covenant Medical Center 19th St. and Lakeside campuses, Covenant Children's Hospital and the new Covenant Specialty Hospital, all in Lubbock, as well as the Covenant Medical Group and Covenant-affiliated and managed health care providers in West Texas and New Mexico.
Prior to coming to Lubbock in January, Clark served as the president of DePaul Health Center, an entity of SSM Healthcare System, in St. Louis, Mo., one of the nation's largest Catholic health systems. As a registered nurse, Clark 's emphasis is on patient care and clinical excellence.
Clark is a Louisville, Ky., native and lived in Tampa, Fla., for 10 years while working for Tampa General Hospital as rehabilitation center director. She joined SSM in 1994 as vice president-operations of SSM Rehab and was promoted to president and chief executive officer of SSM Rehab 18 months later. She became president of SSM DePaul Health System in 2003.
Covenant Health System is the largest health care institution in the region with 1,394 licensed beds, more than 5,000 employees and a medical staff of more than 600 physicians at its cornerstone facilities.
Covenant serves a 62-county area spanning West Texas and eastern New Mexico, with a population in excess of 1.2 million. Cornerstone hospitals are Covenant Medical Center, Covenant Medical Center-Lakeside, Covenant Children's Hospital and Covenant Specialty Hospital. Other system hospitals are Covenant Hospital Levelland and Covenant Hospital Plainview, along with 12 other managed and affiliated hospitals across the region.
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