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Thursday, Mar 28, 2024

Tarzana Hospital CEO Moves to Jewish Home

Providence Cedars-Sinai Tarzana Medical Center’s Dale Surowitz will leave his post as chief executive — after roughly 23 years — to lead the Los Angeles Jewish Home during a time of rapid expansion. Outgoing chief executive at the Jewish Home, Molly Forrest, will focus on growing advocacy efforts as president of the Jewish Home Foundation, the organization said in a statement. She has led the organization for 24 years. Surowitz’s new role with the senior care provider will focus on an expansion initiative to serve 10,000 seniors throughout Los Angeles County by 2025, with its first efforts focused on West Los Angeles, and eventually four other locations in the Valley area, Forrest said. The Jewish Home currently serves 4,000 seniors and has historically been centered in the San Fernando Valley, with its central campus in Reseda. The initiative will push the Home’s Brandman Program for seniors at home — an insurance plan funded primarily by Medicare and Medi-Cal, according to Forest. “Seniors really want to stay in their homes as long as possible,” added Andrew Berman, board chairman at Jewish Home. “Through our Brandman Center for Senior Care, which is our PACE program, we’re able to serve more and more people, a more diverse community, and we’ll be expanding to the west side in 2021 and we’re looking at another expansion for that line of service. “The senior program is expanding exponentially, so we have an obligation to increase our capacity, to serve more people, especially people in financial need,” Berman added. Jewish Home offers rehabilitation services, dementia care, nursing school, hospice and independent living options, Forrest said, making Surowitz’s administrative experiences at Tarzana a good fit. “His experience at Providence will make it very easy for him to oversee all of our different lines of business,” explained Berman. “With Dale, he’s a local boy. He knows this area, he’s been living in the San Fernando Valley for many, many years — he actually lived down the street from me.” “I think that’s a dynamite grouping of skills, intent and feeling that will make him quite successful,” added Forrest. Forrest and Surowitz, it turns out, have known each other for roughly the entirety of each other’s careers, regularly checking in and exchanging thoughts about their overlapping industries. Surowitz also has a special connection to the organization, having an aunt that lived at the home at one point, Berman said. “The Jewish Home has always been very special to me,” Surowitz told the Business Journal. “I’ve had relatives that were in the Jewish Home, I was part of Jewish Home support groups when I was growing up, participating in a couple other support groups over the years, and for the last 10 years I’ve served on some of the subsidiary boards.” Surowitz will serve as chief executive at the Tarzana hospital until Sept. 10, while the health care system conducts a national search for his replacement. “We made a decision pre-COVID,” added Surowitz. “I really had to spend a lot of time here making sure the hospital was prepared and ready. I would not step away from Tarzana unless all of these things were in the right place, and they are. In essence, we are prepared for surges and we’re just having to figure out the processes so we can appropriately do what we do best, and that’s provide care to patients.” During his tenure at the hospital, Surowitz said his proudest moments involve the campus’ ownership change from for-profit Tenet Corp. to Providence Health and Services in 2008, the $600 million Tarzana Reimagined project, and the hospital’s joint partnership with Cedars-Sinai, which was first announced in March last year. “(Tenet to Providence) was a very unique transaction, and just as unique is the relationship with Providence being a Catholic, faith-based organization moving to Cedars — that required a lot of navigating the challenging waters to accomplish what we needed to, and it’s gone off just beautifully in terms of the relationship,” Surowitz explained. “You want to have something in a good position before you leave. I feel comfortable being able to step back,” he said.

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