Trinity Health Mid-Atlantic CEO Announces Retirement Amid Decline in Revenue from Nonprofit Hospitals in the Philadelphia Area

Trinity Health Mid-Atlantic CEO James L. Woodward has announced his retirement, effective January. Woodward initially joined the Philadelphia region in 2016 as the CEO of St. Mary Medical Center in Langhorne. In 2018, he assumed leadership of a group of five hospitals owned by Trinity Health of Livonia, Michigan, which was named Trinity Health Mid-Atlantic. The hospitals within this group included St. Mary, Nazareth in Northeast Philadelphia, Mercy Fitzgerald in Darby, Mercy Philadelphia in West Philadelphia, and St. Francis in Wilmington.

Originally, Trinity Health had planned to close Mercy Philadelphia in 2020; however, the University of Pennsylvania Health System stepped in and kept the hospital open in a modified form. Despite this intervention, revenue from nonprofit hospitals in the Philadelphia area decreased from $2.2 billion in fiscal 2018 to $1.1 billion for the year ending on June 30, 2023 – a decline attributed to several factors including the sale of Lourdes Health System and St. Francis Medical Center. In fact, Becker’s Hospital Review had previously reported Woodward’s upcoming retirement.