As the COVID-19 pandemic gained steam in March, St. Francis Hospital and Medical Center President John Rodis led Gov. Ned Lamont on a tour of a 25-bed mobile hospital, the first in the state set up to prepare for a surge of coronavirus-infected patients.
Rodis, president of the 617-bed Catholic hospital since 2015, has been on the frontlines of the pandemic, leading St. Francis as it takes on patients infected with COVID-19. The tour was meant to show the public that Connecticut’s government and hospitals were working together to prepare for the unprecedented pandemic.
Rodis is a unique hospital CEO because he’s a doctor and holds an MBA from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, giving him both a medical and business background as he navigates the choppy waters of a pandemic and industry consolidation.
His boss is Reginald Eadie, who is CEO of Trinity Health of New England, one of Connecticut’s newest healthcare systems, as well as one of its largest.
The New England system, or “ministry” as Trinity calls it, contains three acute-care hospitals in Connecticut and one in Massachusetts, and is a member of Michigan-based Trinity Health, one of the largest Catholic health systems in the country.
Trinity’s $1.51 billion in 2018 operating revenue ranked the system third in Connecticut, behind crosstown competitor Hartford HealthCare and Yale New Haven Health.
A native of Detroit and a published author, Eadie also is a medical doctor, has an MBA and was named a “100 Physician Leaders to Know” by Becker’s Hospital Review.