Fox Hospital President

Now Bassett COO Too

By LIBBY CUDMORE • Special to www.AllOTSEGO.com

ONEONTA – As Fox Hospital president, Jeff Joyner, new COO of the Bassett Healthcare Network, brings people together.

“Jeff knows that things get done when you work with other people,” said Laurie Zimniewicz, president of the Fox Hospital Board. “And he realized that Fox Hospital, standing alone, wasn’t going to be effective unless the network was effective.”

Joyner, who succeeded longtime Fox Hospital President John Remillard, who retired in 2015, has been promoted to network senior vice president/chief operating officer, a key player in new Network President/CEO Tommy Ibrahim’s executive team.

The other three key appointments are:

• Michael Thompson, vice president/systems improvement. Most recently, he was vice president/provider service for Integris, Oklahoma City, where Ibrahim was executive vice president and chief physician executive before his appointment here May 20.

• Lisa Betrus, as senior vice president/chief strategy and transformation officer. Since 1998, she has been CEO/administrator of Valley Health & Valley Residential Services, Herkimer, taking on the extra role of network vice president for continuum of care in 2017.

• Cailin Purcell, as vice president/chief of staff. With 10 years at Bassett, she was most recently Department of Surgery senior director, overseeing leadership of Women’s Health, Anesthesia and Perioperative Services.

Joyner came St. Joseph’s Healthcare in New Jersey, where he was system vice president of operations. In 2009-13, he was vice president of professional services at Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington, D..C, part of Johns Hopkins. In 2003-09, he was vice president of patient support services at Holy Cross Hospital in Silver Spring, Md.

In 1993-97, he served two terms in the Main State Legislature. He holds a bachelors in business administration from the University of Maine at Farmington and a master of health administration from the University of New Hampshire.

As Fox president, Joyner has been reducing redundancy of services. “Two years ago, we had FoxNow at FoxCare and Bassett Convenient Care, three miles down the road from each other,” he said. “They were two competing practices, so we consolidated them, and now we have a much better product for the community.”

In fall 2018, Fox was awarded an “A” from The Leapfrog Group’s Hospital Safety Grade, placing the organization among the top facilities nationwide for patient safety excellence.

He continued his outreach, and in 2018, the network acquired Tri-Town in Sidney.

“By continuing to create more efficiency with services in both the Oneonta and Sidney regions, Fox and the greater Bassett Healthcare Network are in a strong position to continue providing high-quality care in an ever-changing health care environment,” he said.

“He put two of the former board members on the Fox Board,” said Zimniewicz. “He brings people together who can make a difference.”

And those connections came in handy as the COVID-19 pandemic bore down on the county. “We have come together to deal with the pandemic head-on,” he said “With everything at SUNY, our colleagues in Cobleskill and Cooperstown reached out to ask what they could provide. We’re not an
island, we’re part of a team.”

And he didn’t leave his staff out of the renovations. When the patient dining room
was expanded, the employee dining room was also modernized, complete with a “mini arcade” in the lounge to entertain staff on breaks.

“One of the greatest attributes of Fox Hospital is the people who work here,” he said. “I’ve seen first-hand the care they provide, and I get letters telling me about what a good job
we’ve done.”