Fort Hamilton Hospital top leadership
May 31, 2013: Mark Smith, president
November 2010 to May 31, 2013: Jennifer Swenson, president
2004/2005 to October 2010: Lynn Oswald, senior vice president
1987 to 2004: James Kingsbury, president and chief executive officer
Fort Hamilton Hospital has a new president in charge of the 179-bed facility and its approximately 1,000 employees and medical staff.
Parent health system Kettering Health Network announced Monday that Mark Smith is to become the next president of Fort Hamilton Hospital, the city’s largest private employer and third largest employer overall.
Jennifer Swenson, president since 2010, has been promoted to the position of vice president with the Dayton area hospital group, Kettering Health said.
Smith has filled the role of Fort Hamilton president on an interim basis since March while Swenson was on maternity leave.
Immediately prior to becoming interim president and now president of Fort Hamilton, Smith was a vice president for Kettering Health. Swenson is essentially taking Smith’s position with the network, Kettering Health spokeswoman Elizabeth Long said.
From February 2011 until sometime in 2012, Smith was president of Sycamore Medical Center in Miamisburg, another hospital in the Kettering Health system. Prior to that, he was chief financial and operating officer for Greene Memorial Hospital in Xenia, also part of Kettering Health.
Neither Swenson nor Smith could be reached for comment Monday.
In Swenson's new role, she will support management and oversight of the network and help strategize the nonprofit health system's market growth. Swenson was key to recruiting several physicians to Hamilton in her time as president of the Butler County hospital and was active in the community, Kettering Health said.
Swenson told this newspaper in a February interview her goal was to recruit 50 new doctors to Fort Hamilton by 2015.
Before joining Kettering Health in 2010 in the position of Fort Hamilton president, Swenson was chief operating officer at St. Helena Hospital in Clearlake, Calif.
“We are very grateful for Jennifer’s leadership at Fort Hamilton and are excited she will be moving into a network executive role to assist the organization by aligning our hospitals to better serve our communities,” Fred Manchur, chief executive officer of Kettering Health, said in a statement released with Monday’s announcement. “Mark’s experience in the region allows for a seamless transition.”
Fort Hamilton joined Kettering Health in July 2010 after the break-up of the previous health system it was part of, Health Alliance of Greater Cincinnati. Health Alliance reorganized to become Cincinnati health network UC Health.
Kettering Health consists of eight hospitals.
Fort Hamilton was financially struggling when Swenson became president, and hospital officials have said Fort Hamilton’s revenues don’t yet cover total expenses, which means the hospital is unprofitable.
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