C-SUITE Kaiser Permanente Southern California and Hawaii Health Plan and Hospitals’ president is retiring.

HEALTH: Local leader’s. successor not yet named.

Kaiser Permanente’s top Southern California executive, Julie Miller-Phipps, who guided the health care giant in the region through the tumult of the Covid pandemic, is retiring in July, the health care organization announced Jan. 24.

No successor has been named. In the announcement, Kaiser Permanente said a leadership transition would be taking place over the next six months but provided no further details.

Miller-Phipps has served as president of Kaiser Permanente Southern California Health Plans and Hospitals since 2016; she added the post of president of the Hawaii region in 2020. She oversees 16 medical centers, 264 medical offices and roughly 81,000 employees, all serving 4.8 million enrollee members in Southern California and Hawaii.

Early on in her tenure, Miller-Phipps focused on population health efforts and community partnerships.

Miller-Phipps also oversaw an expansion of both Kaiser facilities and membership rolls in the region. During the past six years, Kaiser Permanente Southern California has added nearly 50 facilities, including two hospitals in the San Diego area - the second of which is set to open this summer. Kaiser Permanente’s Southern California membership ranks also increased by nearly 532,000 during that time.

But it was the Covid-19 pandemic that tested Kaiser Permanente’s – and Miller-Phipps’ - limits. She oversaw the establishment of mass vaccination hubs, expanded testing sites for members and the public, and the deployment of mobile health resources to improve access to care.

With these initiatives in place during the Covid surges in the winters of 2020 and 2021, the health system was able to quadruple its inpatient capacity in Miller-Phipps’ Southern California and Hawaii territory, enabling the clinical teams to meet the critical demand for care.

Miller-Phipps’ career with Kaiser Permanente began when she was a teenager serving as a volunteer, a position known then as candy striper. She officially joined Kaiser Permanente 45 years ago and worked her way up through the ranks. She served as senior vice president for the Orange County service area, then was promoted to president of Kaiser Permanente Georgia from 2014 through 2016. She then returned to helm Kaiser’s Southern California operations and is now based out of Kaiser’s Pasadena office.

Commenting on her upcoming retirement, Miller-Phipps said she decided in recent weeks that it was a good time to step back from her executive position at Kaiser and focus more on improving the broader community.

“I decided that my impact at this stage can be greatest at the community level, and my husband and I would like to be able to increase our work within our communities to be agents of change,” she said. “I plan to continue being involved in business and other important work to improve people’s lives through appointments to corporate and community boards,” she added.

Among the areas Miller-Phipps said she wants to focus on: mentoring women in the workplace, advocating for youth, fostering business relations and improving health on a community level.