Trinity Health Mid-Atlantic CEO James L. Woodward to Retire Amid Revenue Decline and Hospital Sales

Trinity Health Mid-Atlantic CEO James L. Woodward is set to retire in January, as announced by the health system on Friday. Two years after joining the Philadelphia region in 2016 as the CEO of St. Mary Medical Center in Langhorne, he took on the role of CEO of a group of five hospitals owned by Trinity Health of Livonia, Michigan.

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 setback, Trinity Health reported $1.1 billion in revenue from its nonprofit hospitals in the Philadelphia area for the year ending on June 30, 2023. This figure marked a decline from the $2.2 billion in revenue documented in fiscal 2018, as per audited financial statements released.

One contributing factor to this revenue decrease was the sale of Lourdes Health System in South Jersey to Virtua Health in 2019, which generated $542 million in revenue at the time of its ownership by Trinity. Additionally, Trinity Health sold St. Francis Medical Center in Trenton to Capital Health last year, resulting in its closure and further affecting their revenue negatively. However, Becker’s Hospital Review had previously reported Woodward’s upcoming retirement even before these events occurred.