Bartlett Regional Hospital has a new CEO.
Christine Harff will join Juneau’s city-owned medical facility in mid-August. She comes from Thief River Falls, Minnesota, where she’s currently CEO of Sanford Medical Center.
Kristen Bomengen led the Bartlett board of directors’ CEO search committee. She says Harff meets the board’s top two qualifications — previous experience as both a CEO and in a clinical setting.
“We were hoping to get in someone who was experienced at balancing the many different factors that a CEO will have to balance,” Bomengen says. “And someone who could speak the language so to speak about the clinical experience. We were able to find both of those in this particular candidate.”
Before going to work for Sanford Health, Harff was Chief Operations Officer and Quality Resource Director at Monticello-Big Lake Community Hospital in Monticello, Minnesota. Early in her career she worked as a trauma nurse at Seattle’s Harborview Medical Center.
Harff has a nursing degree and an MBA, both from the University of Minnesota. She also holds a law degree from William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul, Minnesota.
She was one of three finalists for the Bartlett CEO job. The other two candidates took their names out of consideration before the hiring process was complete.
The Bartlett board decided late last year to hire its own CEO after more than two decades of an outside management company running the hospital.
