Menninger Clinic selects new chief executive
Houston’s Menninger Clinic has selected the second-in-command at one of the nation’s oldest and most well-regarded psychiatric hospitals as its next CEO, nearly two years after the departure of its last leader.
Armando Colombo, chief operating officer of the Sheppard Pratt Health System in the Baltimore area, will start Sept. 16, Menninger announced Tuesday. Sheppard Pratt is the nation’s largest nonprofit provider of mental health, substance use, developmental disability and social services.
“We are confident that Armando’s veteran experience and positive approach to leadership will guide Menninger’s growth strategically and elevate Menninger’s visibility in the community,” Jeff Paine, chairman of the Menninger Clinic’s board of directors and the search committee, said in a statement.
Colombo, a nonclinician, will succeed Dr. Edward Coffey, who abruptly resigned in 2017. Tony Gaglio, the chief financial officer, has served as interim CEO since then.
Colombo told the Chronicle he is looking forward to “putting together a true continuum of mental health care for the Houston and Texas markets.”
He said he’s “ready to build on the Menninger brand, developing opportunities to expand to additional patients that need mental health care but haven’t been able to get access to Menninger.”
Menninger is one of the nation’s storied psychiatric hospi
tals — mostly because of its heyday in Kansas in the mid-20th century when it’s namesake made the cover of Time magazine — and a leading intellectual center of psychoanalysis. It endured difficult times in the latter decades of the century as managed care ended long hospital stays and new drug treatments were seen as more effective than analysis.
The private hospital moved to Houston in 2003, filling the city’s longtime lack of an elite provider of psychiatric care to match some of its other renowned specialty hospitals. In 2012, it moved closer to the Texas Medical Center.
Ronny Cuenod, a search committee and board member, said Colombo “knows what needs to happen for Menninger and how to get it there,” a reference to the plan for the historically private-pay and overnight-care-only hospital to move into more outpatient care and payment by insurance. He called Colombo “a seasoned operator who knows how to rally people to success.”
Menninger’s patient census has dropped in recent years, but Cuenod said he didn’t know the approximate amount. He
stressed the number fluctuates.
Menninger consistently places among the nation’s top psychiatric hospitals. It ranked No. 5 among psychiatric hospitals in U.S. News & World Report’s 2019 U.S. hospital survey that came out July 30.
Sheppard Pratt, founded in 1853, ranked No. 7 in the same survey. It is comprised of two hospitals, 350 locations, 15 special education schools and two residential programs for adolescents. It operates a residency program in conjunction with the University of Maryland, but all its doctors are employed by Sheppard Pratt, not the university.
Colombo has been COO at Sheppard Pratt since 2017. Prior to that, he was the CEO of the Vanderbilt Stallworth Rehabilitation Hospital and interim CEO of Vanderbilt Psychiatric Hospital.
Cuenod said the national search considered about 30 candidates. He said it was not launched until almost a year ago, nearly a year after Coffey’s resignation, because the board wanted to “assess the situation at the clinic, what the holes and gaps were,” before moving forward.