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Nearly three years after joining Riley Children’s Health, Gil Peri is no longer president of the Indiana University Health hospital.
A spokeswoman for IU Health confirmed on Sunday that Peri—who held leadership positions at children’s hospitals in Connecticut, Colorado and Ohio before joining Riley in June 2021—“did leave the organization.”
But Katie Oakley, an IU Health public relations consultant, would not say when Peri left or explain the circumstances of his departure. “We don’t discuss personnel changes,” she said on Sunday.
Ryan Nagy, president of IU Health’s Academic Health Center, has been named interim president. He also served in that role before Peri was hired.
Riley Children’s Health is IU Health’s pediatric system and has more than 50 locations across the state, including its downtown pediatric anchor, Riley Hospital for Children.
Peri, whose LinkedIn account on Sunday still listed Riley as his employer, came to Indianapolis after spending about four years as president and chief operating officer at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center. He previously worked at several other children’s hospitals, including Children’s Hospital Colorado in Aurora and Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio.
Peri did not immediately respond to a message sent through LinkedIn. Nagy did not immediately respond to an email.
During Peri’s tenure at Riley, the pediatric center continued to gather honors and accreditations for its work, including in the areas of infant and maternal health, cardiovascular services and trauma services.
For Peri, the move to Riley in 2021 was a step up both in hospital size (Riley has 367 beds, compared with 187 at the Connecticut hospital) and in reputation (Riley regularly scores higher across more specialties in many national rankings). He arrived just as Riley was completing a $142 million maternity tower that consolidated Riley and Methodist Hospital’s infant and maternity care at Riley.
Peri told IBJ then that his mission was to keep Riley’s reputation high by attracting top talent and finding ways to improve the patient experience. Riley provides a wide range of medical and surgical services, including burn care, cancer care, trauma care, organ transplants and newborn intensive care.
And Peri said he wanted to continue building Riley into a statewide system, one that could offer care to children in any community in Indiana.
Peri succeeded Matthew Cook, who served as Riley president for 5-½ years and left in 2020 to take a job as president of Benioff Children’s Hospitals at the University of California San Francisco.
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Quite a few people I know worked with him and no one had a single positive experience. Sounds like he was terminated.