UCHealth Memorial president-CEO leaving: Pittsburgh bound

Rich Laden, The Gazette (Colorado Springs, Colo.)
·4 min read

Dec. 15—Joel Yuhas, president and CEO of UCHealth Memorial and UCHealth's facilities in the Pikes Peak region for six years, will leave the organization next month to accept what he called "an amazing opportunity" to return to the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, a global health care enterprise.

Yuhas, 52, will become president of UPMC's Health Services Division and oversee a network of 37 hospitals in Pennsylvania, New York and Maryland.

He had worked at UPMC from 2007 to 2014, when he managed three hospitals. During that time, Yuhas also served as UPMC's senior vice president for international operations, a role in which he oversaw its hospital and cancer center operations in Ireland, Italy and the United Kingdom.

"It's an amazing opportunity to be able to work for a global health care provider that carries a very similar community mission as we do here at UCHealth," Yuhas said Thursday, after the announcement of his move to UPMC.

"I'm returning back to a previous employer that I have so much respect for," he added. His new role at UPMC and its mission will be "a great fit for me," while "the size and the scale of the position is certainly an honor," he said.

Yuhas will leave UCHealth at the end of January; he had joined UCHealth in January 2017 after serving as president and CEO of St. Mary Medical Center in Long Beach, Calif.

At UCHealth Memorial, Yuhas oversaw Memorial Hospital Central, just east of downtown Colorado Springs, and Memorial Hospital North on the city's fast-growing north side. The two facilities are part of the sprawling, nonprofit UCHealth system that includes 12 acute-care hospitals, 29,000 employees and hundreds of physicians in Colorado, southern Wyoming and western Nebraska.

Since he arrived in Colorado Springs, Yuhas said his proudest moments have been UCHealth Memorial's designation as the only Level I trauma center — the state's highest rating — in southern Colorado and its establishment of the region's only comprehensive stroke center.

"I'm grateful to have been a part of (and) helping facilitate bringing those two services to this community, knowing that lives are literally saved every day by UCHealth's commitment to invest in both of these very specialized services," he said.

"Before we had become a Level I trauma center and before we became a comprehensive stroke center, think about it, people with the most critical of injuries had to be flown over Colorado Springs to get to Denver," Yuhas said. "People with the most complex of strokes had to be flown over Colorado Springs to get to Denver. Today, we are one of the busiest trauma centers in the state of Colorado, we are one of the busiest stroke centers in all of Colorado."

Also during Yuhas' time at UCHealth Memorial, it advanced its services for primary care, behavioral health, cardiovascular, oncology and orthopedic patients.

Grandview Hospital in Colorado Springs and Pikes Peak Regional Hospital in Woodland Park also joined UCHealth over the last six years.

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In July, UCHealth Memorial was ranked the top medical center in Colorado Springs and fourth-best in the state in U.S. News & World Report's 33rd annual Best Hospitals rankings.

Several projects now being developed were started during Yuhas' tenure at UCHealth. Among them:

— Memorial Hospital Central will add two patient units with an additional 40 beds to help meet the demand for highly specialized treatments and procedures, an expansion expected to be completed at the end of 2023.

— Memorial Hospital North will add 16 labor and delivery and post-partum beds to support Colorado's largest maternity program, with more than 4,800 annual deliveries.

— UCHealth Eastview Medical Center, northwest of Powers Boulevard and North Carefree Circle, will open next fall and offer outpatient imaging, outpatient rehab, breast imaging, an ambulatory surgery center and multi-specialty, orthopedics, urology, women's care, breast surgery, neurology and ENT clinics.

— The Interquest Medical Center at InterQuest and Voyager parkways is targeted to open in March, with orthopedic and primary care clinics and lab, rehab and imaging services.

— Three primary care clinics are planned to expand patient access in northern Colorado Springs, Black Forest and Fountain.

A successor to Yuhas was not immediately named; UCHealth President and CEO Elizabeth Concordia expects to have more information about leadership at UCHealth Memorial in the coming weeks, according to the health care system.