UTICA, N.Y. — Scott Perra, president and CEO of the Mohawk Valley Health System (MVHS), plans to retire on June 30, 2019, the organization announced Monday.
The MVHS board of directors has formed a search committee to begin the process of finding the organization’s next CEO, it said in a news release.
Perra was appointed president of Faxton St. Luke’s Healthcare (FSLH) in January 2009. When FSLH and St. Elizabeth Medical Center (SEMC) affiliated in March 2014, Perra was named president and CEO of the newly formed MVHS.
Perra joined what was then the St. Luke’s-Memorial Hospital Center (SLMHC) in 1985, becoming the executive VP/chief operating officer in 1989. He remained in the position through the Faxton Hospital and SLMHC consolidation that began in November 1998 and formed FSLH.
He was named president/CEO of FLSH in January 2009 with the retirement of former CEO Keith Fenstemacher.
“We are grateful to have Scott’s vision, leadership and commitment, always working to move our health system to a new level of excellence,” Joan Compson, chair of the MVHS board of directors, said in the release. “The opportunity to build a new regional health-care system for our community was Scott’s vision as well as the board’s and we are grateful for all he is doing to help make that vision into a reality. We believe finding a new CEO for the system will take some time and we appreciate that we can continue to work with Scott in the [18] months ahead.”
Perra’s retirement announcement comes as MVHS is planning to build a new hospital in downtown Utica. It expects to start construction in 2019 and open the hospital in 2022.
MVHS serves a multi-county area in the Mohawk Valley and Central New York. The system includes 571 acute-care beds, 202 long-term care beds, and more than 40 locations throughout Oneida, Herkimer, and Madison counties.
MVHS describes itself as an “integrated delivery system” with about $566 million in revenue, more than 4,250 full time equivalent employees, and nearly 23,500 inpatient admissions and 650,000 outpatient visits annually.
Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com