A leadership transition is under way at Torrance Memorial Medical Center, one of the largest hospitals in the South Bay with 443 licensed beds and more than 5,800 employees.

Craig Leach, the longtime chief executive of the center, is retiring at the end of this month after 39 years with the hospital – the last 17 of those as chief executive. 

Taking the helm on Nov. 1 will be Keith Hobbs, who joined the hospital administration in February as president. Hobbs, 57, served as chief executive of USC Verdugo Hills Hospital in Glendale from 2016 to 2021; prior to that he spent two decades in administrative roles at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.

Torrance Memorial was founded in 1925 and moved to its current location in 1971. Leach joined the hospital in 1984, rising to the post of chief executive in 2006.

Leach, who turns 68 this month, led the hospital through a major expansion, chiefly the 2014 opening of the $480 million, 390,000-square-foot Melanie and Richard Lundquist Hospital Tower with a capacity of 256 beds. He also helped launch Torrance Memorial Physician Enterprise, which includes a growing medical group, an independent practice association and an accountable-care organization designed to serve the community more conveniently.

In 2018, Leach led Torrance Memorial into an affiliation with Beverly Grove-based Cedars-Sinai Health System, which increased patient access to advanced treatments for cancer, heart disease and neurological disorders, among other things.

In a brief interview, Leach described some of the greatest changes he has seen in the hospital industry over the past 40 years.

One of those has been the increasing prominence of outpatient treatment.

“A lot of care has morphed into outpatient care,” Leach said. 

“Technological advances have made this possible,” he added. “It frees up the hospital to take care of more acute and complex patients on an inpatient basis. We can devote more resources – if they are available – to these complex patients.” 

Another major change, Leach said, has been an erosion of government reimbursements for Medicare and Medi-Cal patients. “Medicare today covers about 80% of the treatment cost, down from 90% 20 years ago,” he said.

While that may not sound like a big drop, it adds up over thousands of patients, especially as more and more patients are enrolled in these two government programs due in large part to an aging population.

“This is putting all hospitals, including ours, in a much tougher financial situation,” Leach said.

More recently, Leach said the greatest challenge was dealing with the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic.

“When the pandemic hit, we lacked understanding of what the economics of it were going to mean,” he said. “Despite that, we kept all our employees on board and on campus – even if they had to perform other tasks, such as checking patient temperatures. We didn’t lay off one person. I think we did well with that challenge.”

Looking ahead, Leach said that even as he retires at the end of the month, he plans to remain on the boards of both Torrance Memorial and Cedars-Sinai Health System.

Meanwhile, as Hobbs takes over, the hospital’s expansion push is slated to continue.

“I’m looking forward to the development of an ambulatory surgery center with overnight stay capabilities and our plans to become a teaching hospital with residents rotating to Torrance Memorial as we train future physicians,” Hobbs said in Februrary as he assumed the post of president.