Wisconsin health executive to become chief operating officer of Baptist Health, Kentucky's largest hospital group

Baptist Health, which got a new CEO in January, is getting a chief operating officer, a new position for Kentucky's largest hospital chain. It announced that the job will be filled Sept. 4 by Brian Falvey, who has been a major executive for "one of the country’s top performing health-care systems."

Patrick Falvey

Falvey was executive vice president and chief transformation officer for Advocate Aurora Health in Milwaukee, the 10th largest not-for-profit, integrated healthcare system in the country, serving about 3 million patients a year, the Baptist Health news release said.

Falvey, who worked at Aurora for 26 years, half his life, will report to CEO Gerard Colman. The release said his "key accomplishments include having the facilities under his leadership achieve top marks in hospital quality and productivity while making improvements to services, and redesigning the clinical research departments."

Baptist Health owns eight Kentucky hospitals (in Corbin, La Grange, Lexington, Louisville, Madisonville, Paducah and Richmond) with more than 2,400 beds and one in New Albany, Ind., and is buying a ninth, Hardin Memorial in Elizabethtown. It says it has "more than 300 points of care in 75 Kentucky counties, seven counties in Illinois, six counties in Southern Indiana and two counties in Tennessee." It has more than 20,000 employees.