Roy Orr Becomes VP at Salem Health
August 11, 2011 – Roy Orr, FACHE, has been named vice president of network and business development at Salem Health, the parent company of Salem Hospital.
Joining the hospital system in July, Orr previously was a consultant with Firethorne Health Care Consulting, which provides interim executive staffing solutions to the acute healthcare industry.
Earlier he was the superintendent at Oregon State Hospital from 2008-2010 and resigned at the request of Richard Harris, deputy director of Addictions and Mental Health, following the release of a state report which concluded that the hospital failed to provide adequate care and treatment for a patient, Moises Perez, age 42, who died there in October 2009.
In his bio, which appears on the website Linked In, Orr credits himself with having led a major, intensive, organization-wide re-organization of this 650 bed, two campus, state- operated psychiatric hospital system.
Before joining the Oregon State Hospital, Orr was the CEO of McKenzie-Williamette Hospital in Springfield, where he transitioned that hospital from non-profit to for-profit status, increased its market share into the double-digit increases, strengthened its balance sheet and profitability and created a physician-hospital organization.
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Roy Orr is a self serving glad handing phony who stacked the McKenzie Willamette Board with his golf buddies. He is a flim flam man. He has no operational skills and couldn't turn a hospital operation around if his life depended on it. The Compensation Consultant who advised the McKenzie's board on Roy's salary was on of his BFF and it resulted in an employment contract with inflated signing bonuses and an outsized salary.
I wonder if the Oregon State Hospital knew that McKenzie under Roy's leadership failed the JACHO inspection consistently. Fatal lab tests and pharmacy errors were a regular occurance. It is no surprise that he was in over his head at Oregon State Hospital.
I'm the "Anonymous" who wrote the frist two entries below dated 8/18 and 9/9. I did not write the 10/19 entry below. However, the 10/19 poster is right on - 'couldn't have said it better. I worked for Roy for a few years, and it's all true. In addition to being glib, Roy's greatest talent seemd to be finessing the McKenzie Board of Directors into bringing on new members who Roy was close with and golfed with - a lot. We jokingly called Roy "The Recliner", as in "Lazy Boy Roy". I remember there was a day when we had a lot of important things going on, and I saw that Roy's office lights were off, and he wasn't there. I asked his secretary when Roy would be back. After a moment of silence, she said, "It's too nice of a day!" I thought this was an odd comemnt, but looked out the window at the sunshine and said, "Yes, it is a nice day. But when will Roy be back?" "She replied, "Like I said, it's too nice of a day", with a wry smile on her face. I realized she was politely telling me that Roy decided to take the afternoon off to play golf. In my observation, Roy simply didn't do a lot, while the rest of us worked our tails off. He survived there for so long because he surrounded himself with good ol' boy buddies on the Board, and he forced out his lieutenants who were more talented and more productive than him - the latter represented threats to him. Eventually, having weaker people around him cost him and the organziation, because the resulting weak financial performance forced them into a "partnership" with the for-profit health system. This is all my personal opinion based on direct observation. Roy's interesting, but frustrating. He requires a lot of direct supervision. Without that, he didn't do his job.
This article says Orr's a vice president. But the Salem Health website shows all their VPs, and Orr's not among them. Orr's own LinkedIn page doesn't give himself the VP title. It simply says "Provider Network and Business Development at Salem Health". I have a feeling this might be one of those instances of a currently employed CEO (Gruber) giving an out-of-work ex-CEO (Orr) something to do while he continues to look for a permanent position. But maybe I'm wrong. But I've seen that before in the health care industry. And it will look good on Orr's resume. I don't know how busy he was with his Firethorne consulting venture. Oh, another interesting thing is that Mel Pyne became McKenzie-Willamette's interim CEO in late 1991 when Stewart Tittle resigned. Mel wanted the job permanently, but the McKenzie-Board of Directors said No. Rumor has it that Pyne wasn't happy with that, and Orr was jealous that Pyne wanted his job, so he put pressure on Pyne to leave way back then. Now Pyne is CEO of the huge Peace Health Oregon region. He came out on top after all, and well-deserved. My favorite Orr story is him giving the keys to the hospital-owned (by McKenzie-Willamette Medical Center) Mazda to his 16 year old daughter right after she got her driver's license. She drove it solo and got into an accident one night in downtown Eugene. Luckily, she wasn't hurt, but the car got smashed up pretty badly. The hospital's auto insurance premium went up dramatically after that.
Ironically, Orr and Norm Gruber, current Salem Health CEO, were the two finalists for the McKenzie-Willamette Hospital CEO position back in 1992. The McKenzie Board of Directors selected Orr. Now Gruber's the boss. Also interesting is the fact that Aaron Crane, Salem Health's CFO, was McKenzie's Controller, and then its CFO for a short time in the mid-1990s. Finally, Mel Pyne, now Peace Health's Oregon region CEO, was McKenzie's VP of Marketing & Planning and worked under Orr for a short time in the early '90s.