Hospitals and health systems named far more CEOs in the past five and a half months than they did over the same stretch in 2025, and most of those hires still came from outside the organization or its parent health system, according to Becker’s tracking of hospital and health system executive moves.
However, external hiring did not grow quite as fast as CEO turnover overall.
Here are five notes on hospital and health system CEO turnover, comparing March 19-Sept. 8, 2025, to March 19-Sept. 8, 2026:
1. Becker’s tracked 136 hospital and health system CEO appointments (permanent and interim) in the 2025 window, and 179 in the same window in 2026 — a 32% increase year over year.
2. External hiring did not keep pace with that overall surge. Becker’s tracked 95 external CEO hires in the 2025 window and 112 in 2026 — a higher count, but a slower rate of growth than the 32% jump in total appointments. Internal promotions grew faster still, rising from 35 to 54. As a result, the external-hire share of classified appointments declined from about 73% in 2025 to roughly 68% in 2026.
3. Even with that decline, healthcare’s external-hire share remains higher than the cross-industry benchmark. Crist|Kolder Associates’ “2026 Mid-Year Volatility Report” found 27.3% of new CEOs recruited so far in 2026 across the Fortune 500 and S&P 500 were external hires, versus a 24% historical average from 2016 through 2025 and 24.4% in full-year 2025. Hospital and health system CEO succession among the organizations Becker’s covered continues to lean far more heavily on outside hires than corporate America as a whole, even as that gap narrows slightly.
4. Internal promotions — including moves within a larger health system, not just within a single hospital — made up about 26% of 2025’s tracked appointments and 30% of 2026’s. That growth was driven largely by multi-hospital systems — including Altamonte Springs, Fla.-based AdventHealth, St. Louis-based Ascension, Nashville, Tenn.-based HCA Healthcare, New Orleans-based Ochsner Health and Renton, Wash.-based Providence — moving executives between facilities within the same system.
5. Several notable moves saw systems reach outside their systems and regions for their next chief executive: Nashville, Tenn.-based Vanderbilt Health tapped David Miller from Ann Arbor-based Michigan Medicine, and Marietta, Ga.-based Wellstar Health System in the 2025 window hired Ketul Patel from Tacoma, Wash.-based Virginia Mason Franciscan Health. These “CEO-to-CEO” moves, in which a leader departs one health system to lead another, were a recurring feature in both years’ data.
Editor’s note: These figures reflect hospital and health system CEO appointments reported in Becker’s hospital and health system CEO moves roundups, not a comprehensive national census of every CEO change in the industry. The March 19-Sept. 8 window was used for both years because Becker’s tracking of 2025 moves in this data set begins March 19, 2025, and 2026 data currently runs only through Sept. 8, 2026.
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