Folks,

For several months, the executive leadership team and I have been discussing how we are beginning to emerge from the pandemic, and more recently, our new opportunity with Spectrum Health. Based on those conversations, and leaders reflecting on the next chapter of their careers, I have important updates to share about changes to our leadership team.

Carolyn Wilson, RN, chief operating officer

Carolyn will leave Beaumont Sept. 1. Carolyn’s leadership has been vital over the last five years, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.    

Carolyn’s numerous accomplishments include:

• Championing Beaumont’s behavioral health efforts, including building a new behavioral health hospital in Dearborn and creating a psychiatry residency
• Leading Beaumont’s outpatient expansion, including our urgent care network of 28 facilities and free-standing Ambulatory Surgery Centers and Emergency Centers in Lenox and Livonia
• Advancing the shared services and clinical care programs and services across the organization, including significant success in our orthopedic and cardiovascular strategies
• Creating Beaumont shared services that are designed to improve all outcomes (e.g. 340B expansion, pharmacy, laboratory, radiology, biomed, facilities, food services, environmental services)
• Building a talented operational leadership team that has advanced our key goals in quality, safety, efficiency and engagement with our team
• Leading multiple capital investment projects including: $160 million commitment to the Farmington Hills campus, redesign and rebuild of Woodward Corners to meet the needs of our Royal Oak campus and the surrounding neighborhood, and the Beaumont Service Center development which brought roughly 3,000 Beaumont employees into one centrally located space from 19 disparate sites   

Carolyn’s duties will be divided into two regions between Nancy Susick, RN, president of Beaumont, Royal Oak, and David Claeys, president of Beaumont, Dearborn and Beaumont, Farmington Hills. They will serve as interim co-chief operating officers and report to me.

Both Nancy and David have decades of service to Beaumont and are strong leaders very committed to our Mission. Nancy will continue to lead operations for the Royal Oak campus and will work with Dr. Jim Lynch to oversee the Troy and Grosse Pointe campuses. David will continue to lead operations for the Dearborn and Farmington Hills campuses. He will work with Tammy Scarborough to oversee the Taylor, Trenton and Wayne campuses.    

Lee Ann Odom, president of shared services, will continue in her current role and lead Shared Services operations in collaboration with David Claeys.

Carolyn’s other duties and responsibilities will be reassigned prior to her departure.  

Dr. David Wood, chief medical officer

Dr. Wood will leave Beaumont Sept. 30, as we finalize our new partnership with Spectrum.    

Dr. Wood has led our team of physicians with distinction, and we are grateful for his service. During his time at Beaumont, Dr. Wood helped position the organization for future success by:

• Leading the establishment of a Beaumont-wide Graduate Medical Education sponsoring institution that was successful in transitioning over 90% of the osteopathic accredited residency programs to allopathic (ACGME) accreditation
• Forming and operationalizing the Beaumont Medical Group, which now includes more than 900 employed clinicians
• Establishing a fair, transparent and compliant compensation system for all physician services
• Consolidating all research activities across Beaumont to provide fully compliant and high-quality research activities
• Spearheading the affiliation agreement amendment with Oakland University to confirm Beaumont’s commitment to the Oakland University William Beaumont School of Medicine

Beaumont’s ongoing succession plans will help us identify a new chief medical officer for the organization.

Dr. Sam Flanders, chief quality officer

Dr. Flanders will leave Beaumont Aug. 6 to join the team at St. Luke’s Hospital in Chesterfield, Missouri, where he will serve as that hospital’s chief quality and population health officer.   

Since 2008, Dr. Flanders has been a driving force behind initiating the quality support systems across the Beaumont network. His accomplishments and contributions include:

• Creating and leading the Beaumont Quality Academy, which, along with Kaizen improvement activities at our sites, improved quality, safety and efficiency while mentoring team members in principles to “be the best at getting better”
• Creating our Clinical Decision Support team with a mission of providing actionable data to improve patient care, including using tools such as the Quality Matrix and Control Charts
• Helping to develop a high-functioning quality and safety structure featuring central coordination and local execution
• Creating a systemwide Infection Prevention department that reduced infection rates and served as an invaluable resource during the pandemic
• Introducing and supporting the Just Culture philosophy that ensures people feel safe to speak up about errors and near-misses
• Many of these activities help to contribute to our teams achieving national recognition for our results from U.S. News & World Report and Vizient

We are grateful for Dr. Flanders’ guidance and focus on continual clinical improvement and wish him well in his new role.

Effective Aug. 6, Dr. Jeff Ditkoff will begin serving as our chief quality officer. Dr. Ditkoff is currently the chief patient safety officer at Beaumont, Royal Oak. Dr. Ditkoff is a well-respected physician leader who has demonstrated a true commitment to Beaumont’s passion to improving quality and safety for our patients and employees.   

Dr. Ditkoff completed his residency in emergency medicine at Royal Oak and has served as an attending physician since 2007. He has been working with Dr. Flanders on patient safety and process improvement for the past decade.    

Since 2011, he has served as director of operations for the Beaumont, Royal Oak emergency department and has been the Royal Oak chief patient safety officer since 2017. Throughout the pandemic, Dr. Ditkoff has served as the COVID-19 medical director for the Royal Oak emergency operations center.

He was born at Beaumont, Royal Oak and is a graduate of the University of Michigan and the Wayne State University School of Medicine. In 2018, he completed the Institute for Healthcare Improvement Patient Safety Executive Development Program.    

Please join me in congratulating Dr. Ditkoff on his new role.  

A thoughtful process is in development to identify and select strong, permanent executive leaders for the chief operating officer and chief medical officer roles. Through the search and selection process, we will work to identify the best candidates for these positions. The selection process will ultimately also include identifying the next president of Beaumont, as last month I shared with you my plans to leave the organization following a successful integration with Spectrum Health later this fall.

These FAQs are available to answer any additional questions you might have about this announcement. 

As we continue to recover from the pandemic and begin our journey with Spectrum Health, I recognize this is a dynamic time for our organization. Change can be difficult, but we must evolve to ensure our organization and team are positioned to meet the needs of our patients and communities. I am confident about the future of Beaumont and our mission to provide compassionate, extraordinary care every day.

Thank you for your tireless efforts and your commitment to Beaumont. I will share more information as permanent leaders are identified for these positions. In the meantime, please join me in thanking and honoring Carolyn, Dave and Sam for their many contributions to Beaumont. 

Sincerely,