One Search yields two CEO Hires

With over 25 Community Mental Health Centers (CMHCs)/ Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinics (CCBHCs) in Kansas, the Association of for the State (ACMHCK) plays an important role as the voice of the sector, in advocacy and in education. We conducted the CEO search for the State’s Shared Services provider Healthsource Integrated Solutions during the COVID pandemic.  The Selection Committee was comprised of health center CEOs.  Several of these CEOs subsequently engaged us when they decided to retire, including Valeo Behavioral Health (now Aster), Family & Children’s Guidance Center and High Plains.

High Plains Mental Health  was the first provisionally Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinics (CCBHC) in the State. We anticipated a challenge: attracting outside candidates to this remote catchment area in Northwest Kansas. We actively encouraged internal candidates to apply, setting a bar over which any external candidate would have to clear to be considered. Ironically, we were successful in attracting such a strong slate of outside candidates, that the Search Committee elected to focus on only external candidates, so as to not cannibalize from the organization.

We ended up with three highly competitive finalists for the CEO role, which we had the selection committee force rank. The top ranked candidate was the COO of a CMHC in Manhattan KS, Pawnee Mental Health Services. When we took a reference from his CEO, we learned that she was retiring — and that our candidate was one of two internal candidates for her position. 

So we were pleased that Pawnee’s Board, encouraged by the endorsement of the Association CEO, hired our #2 candidate, Mike Rezkalla as CEO of Pawnee Mental Health Services. Mike relocated from Boston to Manhattan for the position. Mike has over seven years of executive leadership experience as VP of Operations/Chief Operating Officer/Chief Compliance Officer in community behavioral health working for UMass Memorial Community Healthlink, a large provider of behavioral health with a budget of $78 million. Services provided at UMMCHL include a wide range of programs including but not limited to Certified Community Behavioral Center, (CCBHC), Certified Community Health Center, (CBHC), multi-site Community Health Center, (CHC), integrated primary care clinics, residential programs, behavioral health addiction urgent care, homeless services, school-based mental health services, outpatient behavioral health clinics, Medication Assisted Treatment, Assertive Community Treatment, care management programs, housing programs, 163 beds in 5 inpatient substance use and psychiatric hospital step-down units, pharmacy and lab. The organization has a long-standing history of implementing innovative models of care and is a subsidiary of UMass Memorial Health Care which is the largest academic and community hospital system in Central Massachusetts with over 2,000 physicians, a total of 15,000 employees and net revenue of $3.2 Billion. Mike played a role in obtaining Mass Memorial Community Healthlink’s designation as a CCBHC composing the elements of the model required by SAMHSA.

Both CEOs are doing great work, as are the CEOs of the other health centers we recruited.

Five of the six Community Healthcare CEOs we’ve recruited since 2015 are still in place (One retired.)