Children's Hospital Boston appoints Sandra Fenwick president

November 21, 2008

Boston, Mass. -- The Board of Trustees of Children's Hospital Boston recently named Sandra Fenwick president of the 397-bed hospital. Fenwick will remain in her role as chief operating officer, and James Mandell, MD, will continue to serve as chief executive officer.

Fenwick came to Children's in 1999 as senior vice president of Strategy, Business Development and Ambulatory Care Services after a 20-year career in healthcare administration and strategic planning at Beth Israel Hospital and CareGroup. Since her arrival, Children's Hospital Boston has grown from a $300 million dollar annual operation to more than a $1 billion enterprise with 10,000 employees and a network of hospital-owned satellite facilities and community hospital relationships.

Sandra Fenwick, President and COO"We've grown into a pediatric safety net system with the main tertiary care hospital in Boston, three ambulatory centers, an urban health center, relationships with eight community hospitals where our physicians practice, and a network of pediatricians in the community," said Dr. Mandell. "The new structure recognizes this growth and the need to have Ms. Fenwick increasingly focused on our long-term strategy."

In her first years at Children's, Fenwick engineered a financial turnaround of the hospital, turning a $73 million operating loss in FY1999 to consistently operating in the black since FY2002. She helped raise the bond rating to today's AA with a "positive outlook" level, one of the highest of any of the nation's children's hospitals. Fenwick was instrumental in bringing Children's care to families in the western suburbs and beyond by opening Children's Hospital Boston at Waltham, which saw over 61,000 patient visits and performed over 3,000 surgeries in FY2008.

A Chief Administrative Officer will be appointed to take on a significant portion of the day-to-day hospital operations, allowing Fenwick to focus on implementing the institution's 10-year strategic plan and to ensure more efficient decision-making and execution of organizational priorities. A search for the CAO is underway.

As CEO, Mandell is responsible for overall governance of the institution's four mission areas of patient care, research, training of new physicians, and community services, and for managing the complex federal and state reimbursement issues that affect Children's long-term success. He is also responsible for advocating for child health issues on the state and national levels and for positioning Children's Hospital Boston as a national referral center and a leader in basic research for both children and adults.

Also as part of the restructuring, Kathy Jenkins, MD, MPH, was appointed senior vice president of Patient Safety and Quality, reporting jointly to the CEO and president. Jenkins was formerly director of Patient Safety and Quality and is an attending cardiologist. This change underscores Children's commitment to patient safety and quality in clinical outcomes and innovation and the hospital's national leadership in this area.

Contact:
Bess Andrews
617-919-3110
elizabeth.andrews@childrens.harvard.edu

Founded in 1869 as a 20-bed hospital for children, Children's Hospital Boston today is one of the nation's leading pediatric hospitals, the world's largest research enterprise based at a pediatric medical center, and the primary pediatric teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School. Children's is the largest provider of health care to Massachusetts children. In FY2008, Children's recorded 23,750 admissions, 500,000 outpatient visits, 58,440 visits to the Emergency Department and performed more than 24,5000 surgeries. Children's physicians provide specialty care at Children's Hospital Boston at Waltham and sites throughout Eastern Massachusetts, including outpatient care at Children's specialty care centers in Peabody and Lexington, Caritas Norwood Hospital, and Good Samaritan Medical Center in Brockton, and inpatient, outpatient and emergency services at Beverly Hospital, MetroWest Medical Center in Framingham, South Shore Hospital in South Weymouth, and Winchester Hospital. For more information about the hospital visit: www.childrenshospital.org/newsroom.

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