CEO Position At JH Medicine Approved

     Trustees of both the university and the Johns Hopkins Health
System have approved a proposal to create a new position of chief
executive officer of Johns Hopkins Medicine.

     The boards of trustees, at separate meetings last week, also
agreed to greatly expand the board of Johns Hopkins Medicine and
to formally delegate some of their authority to that board. They
also created a smaller operating committee of the Johns Hopkins
Medicine board, to be headed by the president of the university.

     Health system board chair George L. Bunting Jr. and
university board chair Morris W. Offit said the decisions will
result in closer integration of the university's School of
Medicine and the health system's two hospitals and other patient
care subsidiaries.

     "This new structure will formalize changes in governance
that have been evolving over the past year and allow us to speak
and act as one in our responses to the current revolution in
health care delivery, while remaining true to our missions of
research, teaching and patient care," Bunting and Offit wrote in
a memo last week to all Johns Hopkins Medicine employees. 

     Though the university and health system have been separate
corporations since their creation, they have always worked
closely together. They created the joint organizational structure
called Johns Hopkins Medicine last year in recognition that even
closer cooperation was necessary in the rapidly changing health
care environment.

     The new chief executive officer will report to the president
of the university--currently interim president Daniel Nathans--in
his capacity as chair of the operating committee of the Johns
Hopkins Medicine board. In turn, the president of the health
system and the dean of the medical school will report to the new
CEO.

     The full board of Johns Hopkins Medicine, which now has 10
voting members, will expand to about 40, a third from the
university board, a third from the health system board and a
third from members who serve on both. The operating committee
will have 15 members, chosen in the same proportions, with the
university president as chair and 16th member.

     The new CEO will be appointed by the full board of Johns
Hopkins Medicine, on the recommendation of the university
president in conjunction with a search committee headed by Johns
Hopkins Medicine trustee Edward K. Dunn Jr.