GW Hospital appointed Edward Sim as interim CEO following the departure of former head Kim Russo last month, the Washington Business Journal reported Wednesday.
Sim previously served as the executive vice president and president of the Acute Care Division of Universal Health Services, GW Hospital’s owner, a role he held since December 2022. Sims has worked in healthcare for about 30 years, most recently in management roles at both Baptist Health and Centura Health, headquartered in Jacksonville, Fla. and Centennial, Colo., respectively, according to his LinkedIn profile.
As a chief operating officer at Centura Health, a role he held from July 2018 to November 2022, Sim led the system’s three operating groups, clinical delivery and shared services, which totaled about $5 billion in revenue, according to an October 2022 UHS release.
Sims worked at Baptist Health for 11 years, according to his LinkedIn. He began as hospital president in October 2005 before hospital leadership promoted him to the role of president of physician integration in 2011.
Former GW Hospital CEO Kimberly Russo began her stint as CEO in 2016, overseeing the construction of an additional 42-room trauma patient area in 2019 and spearheading UHS’s partnership with the D.C. government to open a new hospital, Cedar Hill Regional Medical Center GW Health, in Southeast D.C., which opened in April. Russo left her role at GW Hospital last month to take a position as chief executive of the central region of OSF HealthCare in Peoria, Illinois starting April 28, according to a company release.
GW Hospital did not immediately return a request for comment regarding their progress in filling the role permanently. There is no CEO currently listed on the hospital’s website.
In 2020, D.C. city officials chose UHS to own and operate the Cedar Hill hospital, including staffing the facility with physicians from the Medical Faculty Associates, a group of physicians and faculty from the School of Medicine & Health Sciences and physicians at the GW Hospital.
The MFA pledged in the original agreement to staff the hospital with 160 physicians, the Washington Post reported. But around December 2024, the MFA requested that UHS renegotiate its contract due to financial challenges. The practice has lost $107 million in the last fiscal year.
Upon entering the role, Sim will helm ongoing negotiations between UHS and Cedar Hill officials to ensure the MFA provides ample services at Cedar Hill by working to hire more physicians to staff the new hospital.
Sim will also oversee the hospital’s negotiations with the GW Hospital nurses’ union, which voted to unionize in 2023 after the hospital allegedly removed union literature and dissuaded nurses from joining the union. In July of this year, the National Labor Relations Board summoned GW Hospital to a court hearing over three instances of alleged unfair labor practices in 2023.
The nurses’ union filed five unfair labor practice charges last month, indicating renewed tensions between the District of Columbia Nurses Association and the hospital. This move follows a December settlement that requires the hospital to begin bargaining and comply with several union terms.
GW Hospital did not recognize DCNA, the union that represents the nurses, for nearly a year after the union vote in July 2023. Nearly a year later, the hospital recognized the union and began contract negotiations.
