Hartford Healthcare shakes up senior management roster

Hartford Healthcare is reshuffling its senior management lineup.

The not-for-profit health care system announced Tuesday that Jeffrey A. Flaks, the executive vice president and chief operating officer of Hartford Hospital and executive vice president of Hartford HealthCare, has been named the president and CEO of Hartford Hospital, effective August 1.

Flaks assumes his new role from Elliot Joseph, who will retain his title of president and CEO of Hartford HealthCare, the parent organization of Hartford Hospital. 

Joseph, who came to Hartford Hospital in 2008 as president and CEO of both the hospital and Hartford HealthCare, will now focus all his energies on the health care system, which includes Hartford Hospital, The Hospital of Central Connecticut, MidState Medical Center, Windham Hospital, Hartford and MidState medical groups, Natchaug Hospital, Rushford, VNA HealthCare and VNA of Central Connecticut, and a number of long-term care facilities.

“With a health care system made up of 15,000 staff members and more than 80 locations, and with the coming of health care reform and the challenges it will bring, we believe we need to follow best practices with a CEO who concentrates on the system as a whole,” said Ramani Ayer, chairman of the Hartford Healthcare board of directors, which approved the leadership change.

Flaks came to Hartford Hospital in 2007 from MidState Medical Center in Meriden where he served as chief operating officer from 2004 to 2007.

Prior to MidState, he held leadership positions at St. Vincent Catholic Medical Centers of New York, Beth Israel Medical Center in New York and the Detroit Medical Center in southeastern Michigan.