Shands Announces New Chief Operating Officer For Shands at UF and Gainesville Programs
Published September 8, 2010
GAINESVILLE, Fla. —Shands HealthCare CEO Tim Goldfarb announced today that Edward Jimenez has been named the new chief operating officer and senior vice president for Shands at the University of Florida. Jimenez will join Shands on Oct. 20.
Reporting to Goldfarb, Jimenez will direct operations for the Shands hospitals and related programs in Gainesville. These include Shands at UF, Shands Children’s Hospital at UF, Shands Cancer Hospital at UF and Shands Critical Care Center. He will also manage operations for the health system’s specialty hospitals, Shands Rehab Hospital and Shands Vista (behavioral health). His oversight also extends to the Shands Rehab Centers and Shands HomeCare, which are operated under Shands at UF.
Jimenez has 15 years of healthcare administration experience. He most recently served as system vice president at St. Joseph’s Healthcare System in Paterson, N.J., which has 900 beds, 4,500 employees and an operating budget in excess of $600 million.
“Ed Jimenez is a well-respected administrator with an outstanding reputation for interpersonal communications, team-building and business strategy development and implementation,” Goldfarb said.
At St. Joseph’s, Jimenez oversaw clinical operating departments, held executive responsibility for the faculty physician enterprise and recruited 160 new physicians to the medical staff; and oversaw construction of three ambulatory care facilities. Under his guidance, outpatient volumes increased 105 percent and his operating areas generated more than 750,000 annual patient visits. He also successfully created partnerships and joint ventures with other healthcare systems.
The Shands at UF chief nursing officer and Shands Vista/Shands Rehab Hospital administrator will report to Jimenez. He will collaborate with Shands and UF College of Medicine leaders to provide accessible healthcare services for patients; play a lead role in hospital policy development and strategic planning; manage operational expense and revenue budgets; implement resource-utilization initiatives; help lead quality improvement initiatives; and champion a culture of service and operational excellence.
Prior to joining St. Joseph’s, Jimenez was with University Hospital, part of University of Medicine and Dentistry in New Jersey, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York and the Valley Health System in New Jersey. He has an M.B.A. from the Zicklin School of Business at Baruch College, and a bachelor’s degree in politics from Brandeis University. His wife, Jennifer Jimenez (formerly Jennifer Gilberts), grew up in Gainesville and went to the I.B. program at Eastside High School.
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