BALTIMORE _ Robert A. Chrencik resigned Friday as president and CEO of the University of Maryland Medical System, his long tenure at the hospital network ending amid the controversy surrounding accusations of self-dealing and no-bid contracting.
"Today the Board of Directors and I received and accepted Mr. Chrencik's resignation from UMMS, effective immediately," University of Maryland Medical System Interim CEO John W. Ashworth said. "This action is an important step in moving the Health System forward during this critical time and we remain focused on delivering exceptional, safe, quality health care across Maryland. We thank Mr. Chrencik for his leadership, service and commitment during his 35 years of executive employment at UMMS."
Chrencik had been on paid leave since March 25 from the position, for which he was paid $4.3 million in 2017 in salary and other compensation. He had been CEO since 2008.
A spokesman of the hospital network said the terms of Chrencik's separation from the system is "still being determined."
The resignation came a day after the medical system received a subpoena for documents in a federal investigation into Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh's business dealings. The medical system said it received a "grand jury witness subpoena today from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Maryland seeking documents and information from UMMS in order to conduct their investigation of Mayor Pugh."
Chrencik worked with the network's flagship hospital since before the system was created in 1984, helping stabilize finances and assemble a 13-hospital conglomerate that now reaches every corner of the state and encompasses both a top-tier teaching and research institution and community health care providers.
The medical system has been under intense scrutiny since The Baltimore Sun reported last month that nine members of its board of directors have business deals with the hospital network that are worth hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars each. Since then, three board members _ including Pugh _ have resigned. Four others have taken leaves of absence.
Chrencik became the face of the quick-moving scandal.
He had traveled to Annapolis to push back against a proposal to bar board members from entering into no-bid contracts with the hospitals they oversee. Despite his protests that the legislation was ill advised, it eventually passed.
Chrencik had defended the system's actions _ including paying Pugh $500,000 for self-published books _ even as he acknowledged there was no competitive process for buying such books.
"There's no other book like it," Chrencik said. "It was a win-win for the kids. ... Where there's expertise, we're happy to try to leverage it."
But Maryland political leaders reacted with outrage to the allegations of self-dealing. Republican Gov. Larry Hogan and Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller, a Democrat, demanded Chrencik and board chairman Stephen A. Burch attend a closed-door meeting where the state officials demanded information about who authorized the deal with Pugh. .
"The governor wanted to press that issue very strongly," Miller said. "I asked the question also: 'Why did it continue? 'They said, 'She continued to write more books.' They didn't tell us who authorized the check, who signed the check and who approved the deal."
Hogan described the meeting as "very direct, very forceful ... where we left no uncertainty about our concern about some of the things that had been going on with the UMMS board."
Acting CEO John W. Ashworth III later testified before a General Assembly committee that Chrencik had entered into the talks with Pugh about buying her "Healthy Holly" books.
"We do know that the mayor approached us," Ashworth told the House Health and Government Operations Committee. "She had direct conversations with the president and CEO at the time, and possibly others. But we need to look into that even more to make a determination about how all of that occurred."
An accountant by training, Chrencik served as the longtime chief financial officer before taking the helm during another tumultuous time when several board members, physicians and then-Gov. Martin O'Malley clashed over how the system was run. Chrencik was tapped to lead the system temporarily, and eventually won backing to hold the position permanently.
In his leadership roles, he oversaw the addition of hospitals on the Eastern Shore, the Washington suburbs and the northern reaches of the state as well as the Baltimore region. The acquisitions sometimes rankled local politicians and health care consumers as UMMS officials consolidated and moved programs and services in a bid for efficiency. He also helped usher the hospitals into strict new budgets as part of a federally backed effort to contain health care costs across the state.
The system now has more hospitals in Maryland than any other health care system, with $4.4 billion in revenue and more than 28,000 employees, making it one of the state's largest employers.
Chrencik praised the 1984 privatization of the hospital system in recent testimony in Annapolis.
From patient dumping to board deals, University of Maryland Medical System confronts yet another controversy
"Prior to 1984, the University of Maryland Hospital struggled mightily," he said. The state-owned hospital "was poorly governed, had obsolete facilities and really was non-competitive in the market and was constantly down here looking for state support."
Chrencik said becoming a private nonprofit enterprise really "changed the future of the organization"
"We didn't have state procurement issues to deal with so we could deal very rapidly on that front," he testified. "There's been a lot of success."
Chrencik also presided over a series of crises at individual medical centers. Since the start of 2018, hospitals have been engulfed in controversies from a patient-dumping accusation and sexual harassment to a shooting outside the Shock Trauma emergency room in the system's flagship University of Maryland Medical Center. Some incidents prompted reviews by regulators and led to policy and leadership changes within the system.
But Chrencik also celebrated achievements in his tenure, such as restoring financial health to St. Joseph Medical Center after the system acquired the hospital, which was suffering its own scandal tied to overuse of medical stents. Surgeons at the University of Maryland Medical Center, a major transplant hospital, performed the most extensive face transplant of the time in 2012 on a Virginia man involved in a gun accident. More than 150 doctors, nurses and other system professionals had a direct hand in the man's care. The system is known for cancer research and treatment, as well as trauma care and the transplants, among other specialties.
Until he was put on leave, Chrencik served as an ex-officio member of the system's board of directors and on the board of each system hospital, according to his system biography. He is a board member of the Greater Baltimore Committee, Bucknell University and the advisory council for the University of Illinois Hospital and Clinics.
Prior to joining the system, Chrencik was a senior manager in the health care consulting practice at KPMG and a supervisor in the accounting and audit practice at PricewaterhouseCoopers. He holds a bachelor of science degree from Bucknell University and a master's in business administration from Loyola University in Maryland.
