Named President Emeritus by Board of Trustees 

New York City, NY  (December 14, 2007) -- Spencer "Spike" Foreman, MD, is retiring as President of Montefiore Medical Center, the University Hospital for the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, after nearly 22 years of healthcare statesmanship and service to the hospital and community. The retirement takes effect January 6, 2008.  Dr. Foreman has been named President Emeritus by Montefiore's Board of Trustees.

"Spike Foreman came to Montefiore as President in 1986 with a compelling vision of the medical center's potential to be great and to do great things in the community it serves," said David A. Tanner, Chairman, Montefiore Board of Trustees.  "He led Montefiore on a course of remarkable growth and development and has steered it masterfully over more than two decades to create one of the largest, most innovative and most successful healthcare systems and academic medical centers in the nation," Tanner said.

Montefiore is an integrated healthcare delivery system that consists of two acute care hospitals, a children's hospital, more than 30 ambulatory primary and specialty care sites with more than 300 primary care physicians throughout the Bronx and nearby Westchester, a home health agency, an information technology subsidiary and its own managed care insurance company -- making it the largest healthcare provider and employer in the area.

Under Dr. Foreman's visionary leadership, the hospital's mission of social commitment continued to grow with the creation of an adolescent AIDS program, a Child Advocacy Center to protect at risk children from abuse, the largest School Health Program in the U.S. and a Lead Program that gave respite and housing to families and their children who were at risk from lead poisoning.

"The past two decades at Montefiore have been characterized by committed teamwork and astonishing accomplishment," said Dr. Foreman. "In a community that had become the national symbol of urban dissolution, we built a full service community care system serving more than 1.5 million residents of the Bronx and nearby Westchester, who comprise the poorest and most under-served populations in the nation," he said.

"By understanding our business, we brought the hospital from the brink of bankruptcy to steady profitability while enhancing its standing as a center for medical excellence committed to meeting the needs of an economically vulnerable community," said Dr. Foreman.

"I've had the pleasure of working with Spike Foreman for more than 20 years, and I can say without hesitation that he's as brilliant and talented a healthcare executive as I've ever met," said Ken Raske, Chairman of the industry management organization, the Greater New York Hospital Association.  "More important," Raske said, " he's a wonderful human being.  I will miss his wisdom and leadership."

Part of Dr. Foreman's legacy at Montefiore is the close relationship he has fostered with organized labor.  "It's an amazing relationship, the one that we have with Montefiore and Spencer Foreman," said Dennis Rivera, Chair of the national union umbrella group, SEIU Healthcare. "Not only one that is recognized as such here in New York, but across the United States and around the world.  I think to a great measure it's a result of the great vision that Dr. Foreman has. I believe he has been an incredible leader for Montefiore, and for the healthcare industry in New York and across the country." 

"The hallmark of Spike Foreman's career as a physician and executive has been his innate understanding of a hospital's deeper role in the community," said American Hospital Association President Emeritus Dick Davidson. "The organizations he has led not only have excelled at their mission of medical care: they have been leaders at changing and bettering the lives of the people in the communities around them.  Many leaders work within the limitation of what they can accomplish.  Spike Foreman has always been driven by the possibilities," Davidson said.

Dr. Foreman and his wife of 46 years, Sandi, will be retiring to a home in Florida and spending more time with their four children and 10 grandchildren.

He will be succeeded in the top post at Montefiore by Steven M. Safyer, MD, currently the medical center's Senior Vice President and Chief Medical Officer.  Dr. Safyer is a 25-year veteran at the hospital and a highly respected healthcare executive.

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