SAN FRANCISCO GENERAL: CEO Departs For Kaiser Permanente

      "San Francisco General Hospital chief executive Richard Cordova has resigned to take a position as vice president for the East Bay region of Kaiser Permanente," the San Francisco Chronicle reports. Cordova has headed the city's public hospital since 1991, where he "presided over periods of tight budgets and broad reorganization." In 1996, Cordova was appointed head of a joint venture that combined San Francisco General, the Laguna Honda nursing home, forensic services and community health centers. "Cordova said his most important accomplishment was reorganizing the city's health services to compete in a managed-care environment," the Chronicle reports. His salary at the time of resignation was $173,513, the highest of any San Francisco city employee.

Timing
      Cordova will join Kaiser on March 9, taking over a division comprised of four hospitals -- including Richmond, Oakland, Hayward and Fremont -- that serves 500,000 members and employs more than 5,000 health care professionals. Cordova said, "This is a good time for me to move on," adding that "he had accomplished what he set out to do." He said his departure "is not related to the recent appointment of Dr. Mitch Katz as director of the Department of Public Health." Kaiser spokesperson Kim Nguyen said, "He has an outstanding reputation in the community, and is very much focused on serving the community" (Russell, 2/12).