Phil Newbold and Kreg Gruber — the health system's chiefs

Newbold's thirty years to 1 November 2017 · Gruber from 2017

A founder by affiliation: Beacon Health System was not founded in a garage; it was founded by a chief executive's act of combination. Philip A. Newbold had come to Memorial Hospital of South Bend from the chief executive's office of Baptist Medical Center in Oklahoma City, by way of a senior executive's post at St. Luke's Hospital in Cleveland, and he led Memorial for the quarter-century before the system's creation. Under his leadership the affiliation of Memorial Hospital and Elkhart General Hospital was carried through in 2011, and the combined system took the Beacon name in 2012 — the sequence the Hospitals section documents step by step. Beacon stands as the largest locally owned nonprofit health system in the region, and Newbold was its founding chief executive.

The succession: Newbold announced on 19 September 2017 that he would step down on 1 November, closing a tenure Beacon's own release counts as thirty years as chief executive across Memorial and the system he made from it. The board appointed the chief operating officer, Kreg Gruber — who had moved to the South Bend area and joined Memorial Hospital in 2006, and had served as president of Memorial Hospital, president of Elkhart General Hospital, and president of Beacon Medical Group before the system's operations role — to take his place. The 2014 episode belongs to Newbold's record as the road not taken: the proposed Beacon–South Bend Clinic merger, pursued from July 2013 through the regulatory process, was suspended by both parties in April 2014.

Sources:

1. Beacon Health System, releases of 19 September 2017 — "Newbold completes tenure at Beacon Health System; Gruber appointed CEO" and the accompanying profile (the thirty years as CEO; the system created under his leadership through the 2011 affiliation of Memorial and Elkhart General; Newbold's prior posts at Baptist Medical Center, Oklahoma City, and St. Luke's, Cleveland; Gruber's 2006 arrival and his presidencies of Memorial, Elkhart General and Beacon Medical Group, and the chief operating officer's role).
2. Beacon Health System, release of 25 April 2014 — the suspension of the Beacon–South Bend Clinic merger.
3. Hospitals — the Beacon sequence documented step by step (announcement and memorandum 2011; the Beacon name, 2012), cross-referenced; Businesses — "Beacon Health — one line" (formed 2012, headquartered in South Bend).