For Robert Garrett, the defining moment of his nearly 18 years as a health system CEO was the 2016 merger that brought together Hackensack University Health Network and Meridian Health, a decision he still views as the right one in retrospect. A decade later, he is preparing to retire from a system that has grown to 18 hospitals, more than 500 patient care locations and 41,000 employees across New Jersey.
Mr. Garrett, who has spent 45 years in healthcare, told Becker’s the merger was the right decision, made at a moment when the ACA had recently reshaped the industry’s assumptions about scale, coverage, access and affordability.
“I think it will go down, when the books are written, as one of the most successful mergers in healthcare history in the U.S. It’s been successful by every measure,” he said. “We’ve grown. Our quality of care has been enhanced across every one of our hospitals and every one of our care sites. Our culture is stronger than ever, and financially we’re stable as well.”
Mr. Garrett will step down as CEO of Edison, N.J.-based Hackensack Meridian Health on June 30, the health system said Sept. 21. He led the system from its creation in 2016, initially as co-CEO before becoming sole CEO in 2018. The board aims to name a successor by the end of March. Mr. Garrett will become CEO emeritus July 1 for up to one year to support the board and the incoming CEO through the transition.
He described the retirement as a decision reached with mixed emotions but sound timing, both for the organization and for himself.
“I’m feeling good about the timing. Professionally, it made sense. Our organization is in a really good position. It’s very strong. We’re poised for continued growth,” he said. “Personally, it also made some sense. After being in the field so long, I wanted to move on to some other things and spend a little bit more time with my family.”
He said he does not intend to step away entirely; he expects to serve on boards, do advisory work for companies and speak publicly. The board, he said, began discussing succession with him over the past year or two and formed a succession committee before the search phase formally opened.
“The best way to describe it is we want to make sure that the plane comes in with a soft landing,” Mr. Garrett said.
Much of what Hackensack Meridian built over the past decade would not have been possible without the scale the merger created, in his view. He pointed to the Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine, which he described as the first new private medical school in the country in 60 years, and to the system’s research institute. The network also proved consequential during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, when the system moved nurses to hospitals that were overwhelmed and transferred patients to less busy sites.
“Those types of decisions could only have been made if you had this robust network,” he said.
Looking ahead, Mr. Garrett expects health system growth to increasingly occur outside the hospital.
“The growth is going to be primarily on the ambulatory care side and on the home care side, because healthcare can be provided more conveniently in those locations, more accessibly and less costly, as healthcare affordability continues to be an issue,” he said.
He does not read that shift as a retreat from academic medicine, however. Community hospitals will likely be reshaped, he said, while academic medical centers and larger institutions remain central to the ecosystem because research and medical education still run through them. He cited last summer’s work on a melanoma vaccine, and the application of that technology to potential vaccines for pancreatic and lung cancer, as evidence of what those institutions produce.
Mr. Garrett said he hopes to hand to his successor a strong foundation without any expectation that it be preserved as is.
“Our jobs are never finished, so there are still some more growth opportunities,” he said. “I hope I can hand my successor a great playbook and a great track record that they can build off of. But they’ll do it their own way, and they’ll look at the situation and maybe make some decisions that are different, and that’s the way it should be. We can’t have Bob Garrett 2.0.”
The clearest example of unfinished business, he said, is technology. Emerging tools including AI, remote monitoring and telehealth will arrive in new generations that his successor will have to evaluate and decide where to invest in them.
“There will definitely be unfinished business,” Mr. Garrett said. “There always is in this field in particular.”
Looking back on 45 years, he returned to where he started the conversation.
“It’s been the opportunity of a lifetime, a true opportunity of a lifetime, to lead this great organization,” he said. “I’m grateful to leave it in very good shape, and hopefully my successor will do some wonderful things. I’m sure they will.”
