When Washington Redskins tight end Chris Cooley swung by Orr Elementary School in Washington, D.C., recently, he explained to the 100 kids circled around him that he’d already exercised that day.FORT WAYNE – The surgeon who performed northeast Indiana’s first successful heart transplant surgery is transplanting his career to Nashville, Tenn.
Mike Schatzlein, CEO of Lutheran Health Network and Dupont Hospital, announced Monday he is stepping down effective June 4.
Lutheran Hospital CEO Joe Dorko will serve as interim CEO of Lutheran Health Network. Officials are launching an immediate search for Schatzlein’s replacement.
Schatzlein, who holds an M.D. and an MBA, will become president and CEO of Saint Thomas Health Services. The administrator will also oversee services for Ascension Health, a national Catholic health ministry, in Nashville and Birmingham, Ala. The cities are about 200 miles apart.
“The positions are very much like what I’m doing here,” he said.
The attraction lies, in part, in tackling a bigger organization.
Saint Thomas Health Services’ four hospitals are slightly larger than Lutheran Health Network’s hospitals, and they are in larger cities, Schatzlein said. The Ascension Health position, which he compared to a regional president role, “meets a spiritual need in me,” he said.
The organizations are not affiliated with Franklin, Tenn.-based Community Health Systems, parent company of Lutheran Health Network.
Schatzlein appreciates that Ascension lists service of the poor as one of its goals. Even so, the CEO said he has “absolutely not” been limited in that regard while working for Dupont or Lutheran Health Network.
“They sought me out,” he said. “It was very flattering, but I’m sure it’s a reflection of the high regard Lutheran Health Network is held in.”
Dr. Michael Mohrman of Brooklyn Medical Associates has known Schatzlein since college. Mohrman was also there to watch his friend and colleague spearhead the building and opening of Dupont Hospital.
“He just was a tireless leader, and he brought the best out in everyone involved with the project,” Mohrman said. “He gets the right people, and he challenges them to take responsibility.”
Those leadership skills allowed Schatzlein to hold CEO positions at both Dupont Hospital and Lutheran Health Network, an unusually heavy workload. The executive will repeat the feat with his new positions.
“I imagine he’ll be able to pull it off,” Mohrman said.
Schatzlein, who began practicing medicine in Fort Wayne in 1980, accepted his first administrative position with Lutheran Health Network in 1994. He and his wife, Liz, have been involved in numerous causes, including an annual walk to raise money for the Fort Wayne Women’s Bureau.
“It’s new challenges,” Schatzlein said about the career change. Leaving is “certainly really bittersweet because leaving here is not something Liz and I would do lightly.”
The couple have three grown children: one living with his family in Indianapolis, one living with her family in Boston, and one attending college in Ohio.
