Marc Gorelick retires as CEO of Children’s Minnesota after seven years

Dr. Marc Gorelick plans to retire this summer as chief executive officer of Children’s Minnesota following a seven-year tenure that included guiding the state’s largest pediatric hospital through the COVID-19 pandemic and the aftermath of the police murder of George Floyd within two miles of the health system’s headquarters.

Gorelick intends to retire in July, when he will be 63. The board of directors at Children’s has initiated a search for a new chief executive, and Gorelick intends to lead the organization until his successor is in place.

In an interview, Gorelick said his current contract runs through May 2026, at which point Children’s will be in the middle of a complex IT installation for a new electronic health record system — a difficult transition that shouldn’t be complicated, he said, by a CEO transition, as well.

“I had to decide whether I wanted to try to extend [my contract] further, or move up my retirement plan to accommodate somebody else coming in and being able to take that project through,” he said. “I thought this was a good time to do the latter.”

Like other medical centers in the Twin Cities, Children’s Minnesota announced job cuts in 2020 followed by shifts in the mix of services between its campuses in Minneapolis and St. Paul, as the health system saw diminished demand for patient care at the outset of the pandemic as well as the impact from a long-term decline in the state’s birth rate.

In 2022, Children’s Minnesota opened an inpatient mental health unit amid deepening concerns over access to behavioral and psychiatric care for kids across the state.

On Thursday, the health system in a news release credited Gorelick with making the executive team and overall workforce more diverse as Children’s became a founding member of the Minnesota Business Coalition for Racial Equity. Gorelick appointed the first-ever chief equity and inclusion officer at Children’s.

The health system’s corporate office and inpatient facility in south Minneapolis is located about 1.5 miles north of where Floyd was killed in May 2020.

“Dr. Gorelick’s impact on Children’s Minnesota has been profound, far-reaching and will have long-lasting impact,” J.J. Kuhn, chair of the governance board at Children’s, said in a statement. “Under his leadership, the organization built on its already strong foundation to advance the standards for pediatric care, while prioritizing equity, diversity and inclusion in all aspects of the organization’s work.”

Children’s Minnesota ranked as the state’s 11th largest nonprofit organization in 2022. Beyond hospital campuses in Minneapolis and St. Paul, the health system operates about 15 clinics with primary and/or specialty care services, including recent service expansions in the Twin Cities suburbs.

At the end of September, Children’s was employing about 6,155 full and part-time workers.

Last year, Gorelick authored the book “Saving Our Kids: An ER Doc’s Common-Sense Solution to the Gun Crisis.” At the state Capitol, he led hospital’s efforts for health equity for children, ranging from universal school meals and banning hair discrimination to making Minnesota a trans refugee state, according to a news release from Children’s.

He was CEO in 2019 when merger talks fell apart between Children’s Minnesota and the large pediatric hospital service at the University of Minnesota Medical Center in Minneapolis. Gorelick was a prominent spokesman for management messages during a nurses strike in 2022.

“As I prepare to pass the baton, I am proud that we have laid the foundation for what comes next,” Gorelick said in a statement.