Local hospital exec trades Providence for City of Hope

Manemann Sees Healthcare Transforming in Next 5-7 Years

Providence’s top executive for California has shifted jobs to the City of Hope.

Kevin Manemann, who previously oversaw all of Providence’s 17 hospitals in California, has moved on to become chief integration officer at the cancer-focused hospital, which is building out a major new hub in Irvine.

Manemann, a resident of Carlsbad, plans to work in Orange County one or two days a week.

“It was an opportunity to be involved in cancer at the highest level,” Manemann told the Business Journal.

“They are doing some unbelievable things. I wanted to be part of something that will transform healthcare in the next five to seven years.”

Manemann, who modernized many of Providence practices in Orange County, was a fastrising executive at the giant nonprofit Catholic health system that has 52 hospitals, over 900 physician clinics and nearly 120,000 caregivers.

OC Innovator

A University of Iowa graduate with a business administration degree, Manemann became certified as a Microsoft systems engineer, earned a network certificate from Cisco Systems and can even write code in languages like SQL (Structured Query Language).

He worked at Allscripts Healthcare Solutions Inc., where he helped hospitals around the nation change their systems from paperbased to electronics.

“I saw a lot of the country and saw a lot of different healthcare systems and how they were put together,” Manemann told the Business Journal in 2021.

He eventually landed at St. Jude Heritage Medical Group where he implemented new systems and became its vice president of operations. While he didn’t know how to run a lab or pharmacy, he did know how to study data and improve processes. He became known eliminating the ubiquitous clipboards.

“What are we doing here (with clipboards)? People expect to experience healthcare the way they do other industries like airlines or hotels or Amazon. Eliminating clipboards was the first tiny step.”

In 2021, Providence named Manemann as CEO for Southern California, including overseeing its three hospitals in Orange County that generated $2.3 billion for the year ended Sept. 30. A year later, Providence announced a restructuring and promoted Manemann to take over the California operations, where he oversaw 44,700 employees.

COH Expansion

The City of Hope, which is based in Duarte, is spending about $1.5 billion to build a cancer hospital and clinic in Irvine. The local cancer center is hiring more than 50 new clinical positions and has scheduled a recruitment fair for March 30.

Last year, City of Hope purchased the Cancer Treatment Centers of America, a network of oncology hospitals and outpatient care centers in Atlanta, Chicago and Phoenix. The combined organization serves approximately 134,000 patients each year, with more than 11,000 team members and 575 physicians.

Last month, City of Hope named Manemann executive vice president and chief integration officer, a newly created role where he’ll lead clinical enterprise integration initiatives.

“They’re building a system and I was pretty excited to be a part of it,” he said. “It’s not often you can build a system from the early stages.” ■