Beverly Grove-based Cedars-Sinai Health System has tapped former Massachusetts General Hospital president Peter Slavin as its next chief executive, replacing longtime leader Thomas Priselac, who announced his retirement in February.
Slavin, 66, will assume the top post at Cedars-Sinai on Oct. 1.
He will have some big shoes to fill. Priselac has helmed Cedars-Sinai for 30 years, transforming the institution from a prestigious local hospital into a regional hospital powerhouse and research institution with a national reputation.
Under Priselac’s leadership, Cedars-Sinai expanded the reach of its care across the Los Angeles region through the acquisition of Marina del Rey Hospital, affiliations with Torrance Medical Health and Huntington Health in Pasadena and joint ventures with Providence Tarzana Medical Center and the California Rehabilitation Institute. Cedars has also opened numerous outpatient clinics and other services stretching from Westlake Village to Anaheim.
Priselac also guided the expansion of its main campus in Beverly Grove, helping secure donations to fund several new buildings. And he greatly expanded Cedars’ focus on medical research and education; there are now more than two dozen specific research centers.
Last year, Cedars-Sinai Health System ranked No. 4 on the Business Journal’s list of largest private sector employers, with 16,730 employees in Los Angeles County and more than 18,000 overall.
“I am humbled to follow in Tom Priselac’s footsteps,” Slavin said in the announcement. “He has been one of my heroes as I’ve watched Cedars-Sinai’s progress over the years from 2,700 miles away,” he added.
Slavin also has a distinguished track record.
He served as president of Massachusetts General, one of the largest and most widely-recognized hospitals in the nation, from 2003 to 2021. It was founded more than two centuries ago as a teaching hospital connected with nearby Harvard University.
Massachusetts General and Cedars-Sinai Health System have nearly identical numbers of licensed beds: 1,059 for Mass General and 1,049 for Cedars-Sinai’s two hospitals.
During his tenure, Slavin successfully led major growth in the hospital’s clinical care mission, research funding, scientific impact, workforce development and fundraising.
According to the hospital’s website, Massachusetts General has more than $1 billion in research operations and is ranked as the nation’s largest hospital-based research program in terms of National Institutes of Health funding.
In a brief interview, Slavin said that after a three-year hiatus where he served as a consultant to hospitals and on several corporate and nonprofit boards, he welcomed the opportunity to get back to the challenges of running a major hospital system.
Slavin said he wants to keep Cedars-Sinai on an “upward trajectory” that had been established under Priselac. He also said he wants to “maximize the value of intellectual property, including the discoveries that come out of Cedars-Sinai research labs.”
On that front, Slavin said he wants to continue to grow Cedars-Sinai’s accelerator program which opened in 2016 and has trained scores of health tech companies. He also wants to broaden Cedars-Sinai’s own research programs.
“I’m coming from Boston, which is generally regarded as the nation’s biotech capital, with a lot of companies here because of Harvard University and MIT,” he said. “And just look at what (the late) Eli Broad did with his genomics center in Cambridge. There must be opportunities for Cedars-Sinai to be in collaboration with the major universities – Caltech, UCLA and USC – to build more (biotech) capital in this area.”
