Kirkland, Wash. – EvergreenHealth’s Board of Commissioners announced today its selection of Amy E. Beiter, MD, to lead the Kirkland-based integrated health system as its chief executive officer. The appointment comes after EvergreenHealth CEO Bob Malte announced his planned retirement from the organization this spring.
Dr. Beiter is a respected senior physician executive with 25 years of experience in the health care field as a leader in both clinical and administrative capacities. She most recently served as president and CEO for Carondelet St. Mary’s Hospital in Tucson, Arizona, a 400-bed acute-care hospital within the comprehensive Carondelet Health Network, where she led strategic initiatives resulting in significant transformation and growth. Under Dr. Beiter’s leadership, Carondelet St. Mary’s evolved from a community hospital to a tertiary care hospital providing expanded, increasingly complex services to the Tucson community.
“Dr. Beiter is a proven, exceptional leader with an impressive career dedicated to serving her community through the development and expansion of services and programs, designed to meet the needs and advance the health of its residents,” said Al DeYoung, chairman, EvergreenHealth Board of Commissioners. “This experience will advance a progressive vision for the future of EvergreenHealth and will help us continue to meet the needs of our growing community here in the Puget Sound region. We are honored and extremely pleased to welcome this seasoned executive, with her impressive ability to align the clinical and business aspects of health care, and we are confident that these strengths will guide our health system in realizing our vision of being the community’s most trusted source for health care solutions.”
While at Carondelet, Dr. Beiter was integral to a successful transition in hospital ownership, stabilized operations to achieve financial growth, and expanded the complexity of services provided within the system. During the ownership transition, Dr. Beiter achieved a reduction in turnover rates, retention of management staff and strengthened the organization’s culture to increase physician and employee engagement scores.
Prior to serving as CEO, Dr. Beiter held several clinical leadership positions including a four-year tenure as chief medical officer at Carondelet St. Mary’s. As CMO, her collaborative, evidence-based approach drove measurable improvement across key quality metrics and patient experience scores, which helped the organization solidify its position among Healthgrades’ top 5 percent of hospitals in the country for quality.
She was also medical director for utilization management at St. Mary’s, a role in which she successfully developed programs to address changes and challenges in compliance, reimbursement and length of stay management.
After completing a combined internal medicine and pediatric residency, Dr. Beiter practiced both specialties in inpatient and outpatient settings for many years. She subsequently became a hospitalist and eventually served as her group’s lead physician.
Throughout her career, Dr. Beiter has remained highly engaged in her community, volunteering her time and expertise as a board director for the Tucson Metro Chamber of Commerce, the Arizona American Heart Association, Catholic Community Services, Arizona Health Information Exchange and other organizations.
She was named among an esteemed list of Most Influential Women by Arizona Business, and Becker’s Hospital Review has recognized her as a “Physician Leaders of Hospital and Health Systems to know” and as a “Women Hospital and Health System Leaders to Know.”
Dr. Beiter earned a Bachelor of Science at Purdue University and attended medical school at Indiana University, where she received her medical degree. She also holds a Master’s in Business Administration from the University of Massachusetts Isenberg School of Management.
The selection of Dr. Beiter followed a four-month national search by the EvergreenHealth Board of Commissioners that included the screening of hundreds of highly qualified candidates. She and her family are in the process of preparing for their relocation to the Pacific Northwest and she is expected to officially join EvergreenHealth on August 22, 2018. Malte will remain with the organization until Dr. Beiter’s transition is complete and the Board of Commissioners has retained him in an advisory capacity through March 2019.
