Reza Kaleel was placed as the chief executive officer of Kadlec Regional Medical Center in Richland, Washington. The medical center is the 270-bed flagship of Kadlec Health System and serves as a regional referral center that has enjoyed an affiliation with Providence Health & Services since 2014. It is the dominant provider and second-largest employer in the Tri-Cities area, with 3,000 employees serving a growing population of more than 350,000 residents in southeastern Washington and northeastern Oregon. Reza is accountable for creating an environment that supports successful organizational performance, quality service, and achieved outcomes. In collaboration with the senior leadership team and medical staff, he is responsible for operationalizing the hospital’s strategies and supporting its objectives, setting and monitoring performance improvement, fiscal, resource utilization, and customer satisfaction goals and standards. Reza drives critical business management decisions and operational excellence at Kadlec Regional Medical Center, while accommodating and leveraging an increasingly integrated delivery model, and serves as a partner to senior leadership in identifying growth and innovation opportunities.
Reza brings to the position a team-oriented and collaborative leadership style. His background in helping organizations attain high scores for quality and patient and employee satisfaction, and his experience with Studer Group methodologies will be assets to Kadlec.
Before joining Kadlec, Reza served as the executive vice president and chief operating officer of St. Mary’s Medical Center in Grand Junction, Colorado. St. Mary’s is a 350-bed facility with a Level II trauma center and $380 million in net revenue that is part of the SCL Health system. In this capacity, Reza had direct operational responsibility for a number of ancillary care areas, as well as process improvement and strategic planning, and had oversight for the development of all key service lines. During his tenure, Reza successfully created strategies for patient experience and quality, cost, and the shift from fee-for-service to value-based performance, as well as establishing an integrated leadership team to strengthen the relationship between administration and clinicians. Under Reza’s leadership, St. Mary’s laid the foundation for the development of a clinically-integrated network that recorded 7,000 covered lives in its first year. Reza created a culture that was more data-driven and better utilized Lean processes, allowing the hospital to reduce average length of stay, and led a throughput steering committee that monitored numerous process improvement projects across the hospital. Under his leadership, the organization’s HCAHPS scores were at historically high levels.
Previously, Reza served as the administrator of CHRISTUS Santa Rosa Hospital-Medical Center, and with University Health System in San Antonio as the director of radiology and as the manager of strategic planning and business development. He began his career in managed care and financial analysis with CHRISTUS Santa Rosa Health System.
Reza is originally from San Antonio, where he completed both his bachelor’s degree in economics and his master’s degree in healthcare administration at Trinity University. He is a fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives. Reza and his wife are the parents of a young daughter. Outside of work, Reza enjoys outdoor activities such as hiking, skiing, and mountain biking, and is an avid songwriter, guitarist, and cook.
