Summa Health CEO steps down to advisory role after HATCo acquisition

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Summa Health CEO Dr. Cliff Deveny announced Wednesday that he will leave his role as CEO in the new year. Health Assurance Transformation Co. president Daryl Tol will become acting president and CEO until a new leader is named.

Health Assurance Transformation Co. — known as HATCo — is the for-profit company that now owns Akron-based Summa.

Deveny will continue working at Summa as a strategic advisor and CEO emeritus effective Jan. 1. He said he will continue to be actively engaged in the organization through 2026, according to his email announcement.

“Daryl (Tol) will work closely with our leadership team and a strategy council of Summa leaders to ensure continuity, stability, and focus throughout this process,” Deveny said in an email sent to Summa medical staff, boards and committees.

The announcement comes about a month after the $515 million sale of Summa Health to HATCo was completed. HATCo is a new business venture owned by venture capital firm General Catalyst. The sale, first announced in 2024, makes Summa the only major for-profit hospital system in Northeast Ohio.

Deveny, who has served as CEO since 2017, will be active in the search for a new, long-term president and CEO, as well as helping to support and onboard that person, Summa said.

In October, Deveny said all of Summa’s 8,500 employees — including Deveny himself and his leadership team — moved to the new for-profit health system. He said at the time that he would continue serving as CEO, though he did not specify for how long.

Deveny on Wednesday did not give a specific reason for his resignation, saying it was time to begin Summa’s next chapter.

“An important component of any enduring organization’s ability to withstand the test of time is thoughtful succession planning. Together with our Board of Directors and partners at HATCo, we have decided that now is the right time to begin the search for the next long-term President and CEO of Summa Health,” Deveny said in the email.

The sale to HATCo has been criticized by Summa is Not For Sale, a coalition of public interest groups in Summit County concerned about public health.

“The HATCo executive installed to (temporarily) lead Summa will be compelled to generate high returns for the firm’s wealthy shareholders, inevitably prioritizing profit through increased workloads for staff and higher prices for patients,” said Matthew Charlebois, member of the Summa Is Not For Sale Coalition.

“Akron deserves a publicly owned hospital dedicated to the health of community residents,” he said.

Any negative buzz or skepticism from the Akron community about the leadership change is unwarranted, Tol said in a Wednesday interview.

“This is a natural transition that we all go through, and they’re just wrong that this somehow signals some negative intention on the part of our effort,” Tol said. “We’re building for the future, and Cliff’s a part of that.”

HATCo began thinking about the succession plan after the sale closed on Oct. 1, Tol said.

“We knew for sure that Cliff didn’t have intention to be here another eight years, nor should he in an environment where the average health system CEO in America has a tenure of less than three years,” Tol said. “I appreciate the fact that Cliff is willing to stay on another year.”

According to Deveny, it was HATCo’s decision, as the new owners, whether or not to give him a contract as president and CEO for another year.

“The transaction took longer than we anticipated, so there was less of a buffer between the closing date and the end of the current contract,” Tol said. “We had to have this conversation earlier into our tenure here than we would have, if we finished (the sale) some months earlier,” Tol said.

Deveny, 65, will work to the end of his current three-year contract, which runs until the end of 2025, then take on his new roles, he said.

Part of the sale agreement was that all 8,500 Summa employees would have the opportunity to stay for a year at their current salary, Deveny said. In his new role, he said he will earn the same salary as he did as CEO, Deveny said. IRS records show he earned $1.8 million in 2023, including base compensation and additional benefits.

In an interview, Deveny acknowledged saying in the past that he would be staying on at Summa, and said that is still true.

“I don’t think we promised that everybody would stay in their exact roles, so maybe there was a misunderstanding, and we apologize for that,” Deveny said Wednesday.

Deveny said he did not receive a golden parachute or any bonuses connected with the sale or his new position. A condition of the Ohio attorney general approving the sale was that no individual would benefit from it, he said.

Search expected to take 6-9 months

It’s unlikely the new permanent CEO will be from HATCo, Tol said. Candidates from inside and outside Summa, including physicians, non-physicians and business leaders, could be considered, he said.

The search team will look for a new Summa leader with experience and the ability to run a high-performing organization and inspire people when telling Summa’s story, Tol said.

“This person will also have to be creative and transformation oriented, somebody who’s interested in the broken parts of healthcare and wanting to build a model that leaps forward and changes the norms and the narrative around healthcare today,” Tol said.

Tol, 51, said he would not take the Summa CEO job permanently, because his responsibility is to lead HATCo. The permanent CEO search is expected to take at least six to nine months.

Tol moved from Napa, California, to Northeast Ohio in February, and settled into a home in Hudson this fall. His background includes running hospitals, medical groups and large health systems for more than 20 years.

Previously, he was Central Florida division president and CEO of Altamonte Springs, Florida-based Advent Health. The division had close to $7 billion in revenue from 23 hospitals. Tol left that role in 2021 to become the executive vice president of brain health nonprofit One Mind.

In 2022, he joined venture capital firm General Catalyst as its inaugural head of health assurance. HATCo is owned by General Catalyst.

Deveny has roots in Akron

Deveny, a graduate of Akron’s Firestone High School, spent more than 20 years at Summa Health in a variety of leadership roles, according to the health system’s website.

He earned his medical degree in obstetrics and gynecology from the University of Toledo Medical Center.

He was originally named Summa’s interim CEO in 2017, when he was then president of Locus Health in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Deveny took on the new role after the public departure of Dr. Thomas Malone, who resigned as president and CEO after the hospital system’s abrupt decision to terminate a contract with its emergency physicians on New Year’s Eve.

After that decision, more than 250 Summa physicians reportedly gave Malone and his leadership team a vote of “no confidence” at an unscheduled medical staff meeting, and more than 200 staffers signed a letter to Summa Health’s board of directors asking for Malone’s resignation.

At the time, Summit County and Akron leaders expressed confidence in Deveny’s ability to lead the health system.