Ad hoc CEO search committee publishes RFP, names chair to evaluation panel

The Hospital Authority Board’s ad hoc CEO search committee said it published a request for proposals for a CEO search firm and set a July 24, 2025, submission deadline, and the committee voted that its chair will serve as the board’s representative on the evaluation committee that will score and rank proposals.

The RFP, the committee chair said, focuses on finding a firm to conduct the immediate CEO search and to serve as a resource for future executive-level searches. Committee members discussed whether multiple board members should sit on the evaluation team, whether portions of the process could be held in executive session, and how to preserve candidate confidentiality while meeting Tennessee open-meetings rules.

In public comment before business began, Bill Campbell, trauma program manager at Nashville General Hospital, urged the board to appoint Dr. Veronica Elders as the hospital’s permanent CEO. “I’m speaking to you today to express my strong and enthusiastic support for the permanent appointment of Dr. Veronica Elders as chief executive officer of Nashville General Hospital,” Campbell said. He credited Elders’ leadership as interim CEO and as the hospital’s former chief nursing officer with improvements in the hospital’s Leapfrog quality score and cited operational metrics, saying emergency-department door-to-doctor time had fallen “from 34 minutes to 8 minutes.”

Committee members reviewed procedural details in the RFP and asked staff to clarify several items with Metro procurement and Metro Legal. The RFP document, the chair said, contains boilerplate and a specific background section; the committee chair directed attention to that background section as the primary RFP-specific material. Committee members and staff noted the RFP’s explicit evaluation criteria and weighting: cost (30 points), methodology and approach (30 points) and qualifications and experience (40 points), and discussed how evaluation committee members will use those weights to score submissions.

Committee members debated two models for the evaluation committee: (1) a small group consisting of one board representative plus senior hospital executives (HR director, chief financial officer, chief marketing officer and others the HR director recommends), or (2) a broader panel that could include additional board members and operational, patient-facing staff such as an operating-room director or ICU charge nurse. Several members argued for a single board representative to preserve expedition and to avoid triggering broader public-meeting deliberations; others warned that relying only on executive leadership could limit frontline perspectives. Diana Wolfhard, identified in the meeting as the hospital’s HR director, is the staff lead who will liaise with Metro procurement on process details.

Committee members also asked Metro Legal whether portions of the hiring process could be discussed in executive session. The chair said the committee will request written guidance from Metro Legal about the circumstances, if any, under which discussions of strategy related to the CEO search could qualify for executive session. Committee members noted that some candidates for a public-entity CEO post may be reluctant to participate if their candidacy will be widely publicized and that the selected search firm’s experience handling confidential searches for public organizations will be an important evaluation factor.

On a motion from Dr. Nettles, seconded by Mr. Esquivel, the committee voted by voice to appoint the committee chair to serve on the evaluation committee for the RFP phase only; the motion carried. The chair clarified that the vote covered only the RFP-evaluation phase (choosing which search firms will be interviewed) and not any later stage in which CEO candidates would be evaluated. The committee instructed staff to obtain Metro Legal’s written advice on executive-session questions and to report procurement timelines after July 24.

Committee members estimated the procurement and evaluation period will take several weeks after the July 24 deadline and suggested the full firm-selection process could take about two months. The RFP requests that the selected search firm commence the CEO search within 30 days of contract selection, the chair said. The committee did not take further formal actions at this meeting; it approved previous minutes and agreed to remain on call for updates from Metro Legal and procurement.

The meeting closed with the committee chair saying updates and legal guidance will be provided to committee members between meetings as permitted by open-meeting rules and procurement confidentiality requirements.