April 23, 2004 – Roy L. Schneider Hospital and Myrah Keating Smith Community Health Center have a new chief financial officer – Peter R. Najawicz.
New to St. Thomas but not to the territory, Najawicz spent three years on St. Croix following Hurricane Hugo. He was employed by Chicago Bridge and Iron Co. at the time, and his job was to set up the local business operations of the company, which had been contracted to help rebuild the badly damaged Hess Oil Virgin Islands Corp. refinery.
In a Schneider Hospital release, Najawicz said his goals for the St. Thomas hospital and St. John center include improving employee satisfaction in the financial services division and improving cash flow to the hospital organization.
Prior to returning to the territory, Najawicz was division controller for Central DuPage Health, a suburban Chicago health-care system with a 337-bed hospital, more than 4,300 employees and annual revenues in excess of $390 million.
At Central DuPage, the release stated, he was responsible for recovering $1.3 million in Medicare reimbursements through prior-year cost report settlements and exceptions.
Rodney E. Miller Sr., Schneider Hospital president and chief executive officer, said Najawicz will play "a big part" in efforts to improve the hospital's financial health — "improving billing, collections, financial reporting, and overseeing one of the largest and most important divisions here, our financial services division."
Najawicz is a Certified Public Accountant with 14 years of experience in his field. He received his bachelor's degree n accounting from Western Michigan University and his MBA from the University of Notre Dame. After working on St. Croix, he returned to Chicago where he later was promoted to accounting manager for Chicago Bridge and Iron. In 1996 he joined Central DuPage Health as a financial analyst; he later was promoted to division controller.
On St. Thomas, Najawicz succeeds Eugene Welsh, who resigned as director of Schneider Hospital patient financial services in December 2002. In the interim, the hospital had been utilizing accounting services of Pershing, Yoakley and Associates, a firm headquartered in Atlanta.
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