I have a good friend in hospital consulting industry who is very plugged into this story.
BIDMC is very solvent- Levy did a marvelous turnaround job - his resignation is largely a function of having burned up political capital. the BI is competing and competing well with Partners - witness scooping in and landing the big managed care contract from partners recently. No private patient in Boston wants to go to the Brigham, just MGH private service or the BI. BI is clearly the best run and most efficient competitive of all the harvard teaching hospitals. It does a better job than the Lahey or even Newton Wellesley.
He's been there 10 years and had to rescue the hospital after the nettlesome Deaconess merger - these are burn out jobs for anyone.
Knowing a little history helps to understand.
When partners was forming back in the day of crazy HMO consolidation the BI- the most solvent and best run hospital at the time - felt it would be crushed by Partners and panicked into merging with the Deaconess in 1996 - a stodgy, behind the times, financially troubled institution , that should have been allowed to quietly close. They spent many years cleaning up that messy merger/bad strategic decision. Levy took over in 2002 largely to clean up that mess and has succeeded quit well. (NB- BIDMC has >$200 in research grants each year as well.)
More recently he suffered when a "close personal relationship" with a single women (while he was married with two grown daughters) who reported to him was revealed through an anonymous letter to the board that caught most the board unawares. This inevitably started a war between those who are old school and those who are more tolerant of such relationships. Some felt they shouldn't have someone running the hospital who was an adulterer, and its never acceptable to be sleeping with someone you supervise. Others felt this is 2009- who cares ? and who are you going to meet/date other than someone at work these days when you are working 80 hour weeks ? So you can see both positions were principled. Some feel he was persecuted/witch hunt. others feel he was given unconscionable pass because he was an effective executive. (You see similar strains in the whole Mark Hurd thing at Hewlett Packard. Who's right ? who knows ?) Where things got heavy was when the state attorney general investigated and chastised the board,. Even though Levys girlfriend was not paid more than her "peers" she did get bonuses , good evaluations and the positions seem to have ben created exclusively for her. So it was pretty blatant nepotism, but the type that corporations routinely tolerate in successful executives. Levy clearly felt he was above normal rules in this regard, and that was the bigger concern of his opponents who were not prudes. He was becoming unaccountable at any level. Hospitals like the BI are pluralistic, consensus driven places, with numerous power centers (including very influential donnas in the BIs case) and this was very concerning even for those who could care less about who he was sleeping with.
In the end a split board compromised and tried to move on - very ambiguous ambivalent decision - everyone knew he was a great administrator; he wasn't fired or had salary cut- he just lost some of his bonus. They publicly humiliated him, but details did not leak out (this allows both sides to hint at what they what the details to be) due to legal restraints. In the end lawyers were heavily involved in both sides, and this never ends well - nobody is happy (save the lawyers) grudges are held, etc/
Suffice to say this really isn't a shocker - he had a seemly year of so to let it die down, and Im sure he knew it was time to move on last year , just choosing a time more to his advantage now. When you've fought the ordinary hospital executive wars in a competative environment like the BIDMC, with all the Harvard politics, and the huge Harvard doctor egos around there, a guy like Levy is smart enough to know when to leave. Other factors- he likes turnarounds, not pedestrian aspects of maintenance . Dealing with ACO's reorganization is going to require burning up a lot more political capital moving forward at any hospital , which he no longer has - they need a new guy in there with fresh commitments from the ENTIRE board, not wanting to settle old scores/disputes- asking docs to take salaries, cutting proceduralists salaries to subsidize primary care docs , etc will surely arouse big new fights. He didn't have the appetite or political capital for that.
Bottom line- if Levy wants to run another hospital he will be a top candidate ANYWHERE; hospital is in very good financial and competative shape. BIDMC is now a critical component of HMS and will remain so. It is the best run hospital in Boston; they will have little difficulty replacing him with a stellar executive. The only question moving forward is will other power centers/powerful people (esp. medical chairmen) want someone less powerful in the position ?
from a residents perspective for the next three years the BI will still run like butter, have state of the art computer/HIT/EMR systems, be popular with patients, have an excellent teaching program,and well funded (relatively) medical department. Mark Zeidel (med chair) is a major player and he is not going anywhere - things very stable in medicine department. Moreoever, and medicine departments everywhere - not just the BIDMC- are poised to benefit (relatively at least) with the ACO rollout (at expense of rads, surgery etc). Historically Medicine has been very strong clinically and medically at the BI and more than held its own with surgery etc; that should be easily sustained.
so things should be fine, and if they can install an experienced skilled replacement with a mandate to innovate like Levy had originally , they will be even better posiitoned with a new CEO.
I wouldn't Levys stepping down influence your decision negatively at all.
