When Michael Wagner, MD, president and CEO of Providence, R.I.-based Care New England, announced plans to step down after 40 years in healthcare and four years leading the system, he didn’t frame it as the end of an era. Instead, he described a standalone health system poised not just to survive, but to thrive.
Care New England’s board has launched a national search for its next president and CEO, with a goal to appoint one in early 2027. Dr. Wagner will retire from full-time work once a successor is named and become chair of the system’s board of directors.
“We’ve shown that Care New England can be a standalone successful organization that provides the foundation of healthcare in Rhode Island, and we’re here to stay,” Dr. Wagner told Becker’s.
When Dr. Wagner arrived, Care New England had been in some form of merger discussions for more than a decade, creating uncertainty about whether the system could maintain its standalone status.
Since then, Dr. Wagner has helped oversee the system’s financial turnaround, with around $300 million in completed or ongoing capital investments. Care New England has also undergone a unified Epic implementation.
“The thing I’m most proud of is that we’ve proven to our employees, the team members, we’ve proven to the market [and] the politicians that Care New England is not only a viable healthcare organization, it can be incredibly successful,” he said.
Dr. Wagner said the system’s turnaround required personal investment and a deliberate focus on molding the right leadership team.
Dr. Wagner encouraged Care New England’s next leader to build on the system’s foundation, investing in its services and academic identity. He also said the relational nature of leading in a small state is something the incoming CEO must internalize quickly.
“One of the key pieces around the new leader is to understand that it is a deeply relationship-driven state,” he said. “Knowing the governor, the speaker of the house, the senate president, the federal delegation and the other CEOs … it’s developing those relationships and thinking of ways to collaborate as opposed to just focusing on competition.”
Following his retirement, Dr. Wagner plans to remain active in industry happenings, and has become particularly engaged in questions around antitrust regulation and how competing systems can find legal pathways to work together on services that cannot be advanced independently.
As board chair, he also expects to play an active role in the leadership transition.
“Since I know the players in the marketplace, I really look forward to introducing the new CEO so they can get up to speed really fast,” he said.
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