John Howser
Chad Fitzgerald, JD, Senior Vice President for Health System Emergency Operations, has been named Executive Vice President and will lead Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s (VUMC) Clinical Support Services Division. He will assume this new role on Jan. 1, 2024.
Fitzgerald succeeds Jim Hayman, MS, MBA, the division’s founding leader, who is retiring from VUMC on Dec. 31.
In addition to leading the Clinical Support Services Division, Fitzgerald will continue to oversee Health System Emergency Operations, which will be incorporated into the division.
With these new responsibilities, Fitzgerald will continue to report to C. Wright Pinson, MBA, MD, Deputy Chief Executive Officer and Chief Health System Officer, and is charged with leading the division’s continued growth and development.
“Services provided through this division are the lifeblood of our health system’s operations. Chad has the skills and experience, along with close relationships with many individuals across our clinical enterprise necessary to succeed in this new role. I look forward to working closely with him as we continue to advance our mission,” Pinson said. “I want to again thank Jim Hayman for taking on the responsibilities as this division’s founding leader.”
Formed in 2022, the Clinical Support Services Division supports VUMC’s various entities such as Vanderbilt University Hospital, Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt, Vanderbilt Health Services along with Vanderbilt Health’s community hospitals and ambulatory clinics.
The division follows a shared services model and includes administrative and organizational alignment of VUMC’s pharmacy, laboratory and sterile processing services. The division’s mission is to ensure enterprise alignment, economies of scale and operational synergies, and standards of best practice enhancing quality, patient safety and compliance while eliminating variability.
At VUMC, historically, most clinical support services resided as single entities and were allocated to serve various other Medical Center entities. Due to VUMC’s expansive growth, core services have reached the scale at which the shared services model, creating greater alignment, standardization and efficiencies for these services, were implemented.
Fitzgerald has 22 years of experience across the health care and legal fields with a focus on management, compliance, training, negotiation and communication.
He joined VUMC in 2014 as Regulatory Administrator. In this role, he was responsible for responding to external agency inquiries and investigations of VUMC. This included preparation and response to The Joint Commission. Through a series of successively more responsible roles, he was named Vice President and Chief Regulatory Officer in December of 2021.
In September of 2022, Fitzgerald was named Senior Vice President for Health System Emergency Operations, where he led VUMC’s operational response to COVID-19. He also serves as chair of VUMC’s Workplace Violence Committee and as chair of VUMC’s Safety Committee.
“I have such gratitude and appreciation for Jim Hayman’s service to VUMC and his leadership with the new Shared Services Division. Every VUMC patient and clinician utilize one, if not all, of the services in the division. I am thrilled and humbled to support these teams and VUMC’s mission,” Fitzgerald said.
Prior to his career in health care, Fitzgerald worked for the District Attorney’s Office of the 16th Judicial District, including Rutherford and Cannon Counties of Tennessee. Fitzgerald then worked for a Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) contractor, investigating health care fraud alongside the U.S. Department of Justice, the U.S. Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. During this time, he managed five offices of investigators across the middle and western United States.
Fitzgerald earned a Bachelor of Science degree from Middle Tennessee State University and a Doctor of Jurisprudence from Nashville School of Law. In 2021, he was the recipient of a VUMC Five Pillar Leader Award for his outstanding organizational leadership throughout the COVID pandemic.
