Michael McBride—who led the Baton Rouge-based Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady Health System for a little over one year, until his controversial ousting in March—has been named the regional president and chief operating officer of Ascension St. John in the Tulsa, Oklahoma, region.
In his new position, McBride will oversee seven hospitals and more than 90 health care clinics in eastern Oklahoma and southeastern Kansas.
Perhaps more significantly, he will be a key regional executive with the largest nonprofit health care company in the U.S. and the largest Catholic health care company in the world.
The St. Louis-based Ascension owns more than 150 hospitals and thousands of health care facilities and has more than 150,000 employees.
It has grown over the past decade by acquiring smaller, regional nonprofit and Catholic health care systems. It merged with the St. John system that McBride will be leading in 2013.
At FMOL, McBride received strong reviews and a raise in his one-year performance evaluation in January, though some within the system bristled at some of his changes and accountability measures. He also clashed with Scott Wester, CEO of FMOL’s flagship hospital, Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center, in part over the handling of the John Paul Funes scandal.
Funes, OLOL’s longtime chief fundraiser, was fired last fall and has since pleaded guilty to stealing more than $800,000 from the hospital foundation.
McBride had tried to negotiate a deal under which Wester would resign. Instead, it was McBride who was abruptly fired by the FMOL nuns who run the system.
In his new position, McBride will help implement a new strategic vision for Ascension St. John, says CEO Jeffrey Nowlin in a memo Monday to the Ascension St. John board of directors announcing the appointment.
