Our Expert Faculty

Jim Edwards is President and CEO of the Greater Hazleton Health Alliance, which includes the Hazleton General Hospital, Hazleton-Saint Joseph Medical Center and the Hazleton MRI Center.

Jim received his Bachelor of Science degree in Accounting from Wilkes University and is a Certified Public Accountant. 

He has a 19-year career in the healthcare financial field, 14 of which are with our local health system.  Jim began his tenure with the health system in 1991, before the Alliance was formed, and served as controller of Hazleton-Saint Joseph Medical Center.

The Greater Hazleton Health Alliance was formed in late 1996, and in 1997, Jim was named Chief Financial Officer of the Alliance, a position he held until his appointment as President on June 1, 2004. 

Prior to joining the Alliance, Jim served as a supervisor for Parente Randolph, a national firm of certified public accountants and consultants.

Robert R. Fanning, Jr. joined Speltz & Weis in 2003 as the Interim Chief Executive Officer of The Kingston Hospital and the Kingston Regional Health Care System. Robert was responsible for turning a troubled Hospital and Health Care System with less than a day of cash on hand, into a viable organization.  He left that position in April of 2004, to become Chief Operating Officer, of Saint Vincent Catholic Medical Centers of New York, a Speltz & Weis client. In May of 2005, Speltz & Weis was acquired by the Huron Consulting Group. Robert became a Managing Director at Huron Consulting at the time of the acquisition.  In August of 2005, David Speltz and Tim Weis resigned as CEO and CFO of St. Vincent Catholic Medical Centers, and the Board Chairman was named Interim CEO, and requested that Robert continue in his role as COO.  In his role as COO of St. Vincent Catholic Medical Centers, he was responsible for the day to day operations of a 1.6 Billion dollar organization with over 11,500 employees, nine hospitals, four nursing homes, a large home care organization, and the largest behavioral health network in New York.  Robert retired from the Huron Consulting Group on December 31, 2005 as well as COO of St. Vincent Catholic Medical Centers.

From 2000 to 2002, he was a Senior Principal with BBK, an internationally recognized corporate renewal, operations improvement and turnaround management firm serving virtually every business sector.

Robert joined the Beverly Hospital as President and Chief Executive Officer in June, 1980.  Under his leadership a number of acquisitions, joint ventures and affiliations have positioned Beverly Hospital and Northeast Health Systems as one of the leading community-based networks in the country.  When he retired in 2000, Northeast Health Systems had revenues of over three hundred million dollars, and included four acute care campuses, two nursing homes, two assisted living facilities, and the largest behavioral health network in Eastern Massachusetts.

Robert holds a B.A. degree in Business Administration from Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, an M.B.A. degree with a concentration in Health Care Administration, from Xavier University, Cincinnati, Ohio, and in May 1991 he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Endicott College, Beverly, Massachusetts.  Prior to joining Beverly Hospital, Robert was Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer at the Children’s Hospital, Boston (1976-1980), and held various positions at the Burbank Hospital, Fitchburg, Massachusetts (1971-1976).  He completed his Administrative Residency at Boston’s Beth Israel Hospital, and spent two years as the Assistant to the Executive Director, Dr. Mitchell T. Rabkin. 

Robert is a Life Fellow in the American College of Health Care Executives, and is a Past Chairman of that organization.  In October 1999, he was a co-recipient of the Massachusetts Health Council Award, which has been presented annually since 1980 to individuals “who have made outstanding contributions to the advancement of the general health of the citizens of the Commonwealth”. 

Robert is a Past Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Massachusetts Hospital Association, a Past Chairman of the Massachusetts Council of Community Hospitals, and a Past Chairman of the Board of the Massachusetts Health and Educational Facilities Authority. He has served for the past twenty years as an independent Director of Health Care Property Investor, Inc., the largest publicly traded health care REIT.

Paul F. Levy was appointed President and Chief Executive Officer of the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston in January 2002. BIDMC is one of the nation’s preeminent academic health centers, providing state-of-the-art clinical care, research, and teaching in affiliation with Harvard Medical School. Licensed for over 600 beds, BIDMC annual revenues are approximately $1 billion. Previously, Paul was the Executive Dean for Administration at Harvard Medical School, where he was responsible for administrative, budgetary, and facility issues, as well as community and governmental relations. He was also involved in coordinating collaborative ventures between HMS and its affiliated hospitals. Before joining Harvard Medical School, Paul was Adjunct Professor of Environmental Policy at MIT, where he taught infrastructure planning and development and environmental policy for seven years. He also maintained an independent consulting practice, providing strategic, negotiation, and regulatory advice to firms in the energy, water, and telecommunications arenas.

Paul has served as Executive Director of the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority, Chairman of the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities, and Director of the Arkansas Department of Energy. At the MWRA, he had primary responsibility for the “Boston Harbor Cleanup,” one of the largest pollution control projects in the world.  In operating the water transmission system for 46 communities at the MWRA, Paul carried out an aggressive demand management program which decreased water consumption by 15% over a three-year period. As Chairman at the MDPU, Paul regulated the electricity, telecommunications, natural gas, and water utilities in Massachusetts. While at the Arkansas Department of Energy, he directed energy programs, planning, policy and advocacy for the State, including such areas as energy conservation, renewable and fossil energy resource development, and regulatory and legislative matters. He is the author if numerous articles in a variety of fields and co-author of Negotiating Environmental Agreements (Island Press, 1999).

Dennis Patterson is a founding Principal of Wellspring Partners. Dennis' primary expertise is in hospital operations and organizational change management. In his 33 years in healthcare management, Dennis has worked in a number of countries, including the U.K. Dennis specializes in supporting healthcare management teams in the implementation of strategic and operational improvements. By developing a solid understanding of the organization's existing design and culture, he effectively creates transformation within a supportive environment. He has worked at both the hospital and system levels to establish balance in authority and control within the organization to sustain effective operations.

Some of Dennis' recent engagements include:

• Acting as the Interim Chief Executive Officer of a four-hospital region of a Catholic system that had sustained a $40 million loss in one year. Working with a team of senior managers, he formed and implemented a turnaround plan that returned the region to profitability within two years, while preserving the system's mission to support the community's poor.
• Serving as the Chief Transformation Officer of a teaching hospital in the Midwest, which had sustained substantial losses. Working with the existing management team and the University, he was able to correct the losses, allowing the University to enter its first joint venture with a for-profit system that permitted the hospital to both prosper and maintain its teaching affiliation.
• In a dominant healthcare organization in the Pacific Northwest, Dennis, as part of the Wellspring team, acted as the consultant to the CEO in creating a new culture and organizational structure of accountability, balanced with its Catholic mission.  This resulted in clearly understood management accountability for cost, care service delivery, and customer service.