Shane Strum is now the permanent CEO of Memorial Healthcare System.
Carl Juste
cjuste@miamiherald.com
Shane Strum is now the permanent president and CEO of Memorial Healthcare System and will also continue to lead its sister Broward Health, bringing the Broward health systems one step closer to his vision of a unified approach to care in the region.
Strum, who has led Memorial for nearly two years as interim CEO, had his appointment made permanent Wednesday afternoon, as was expected, by the seven-member board that oversees Memorial. The seven-member board that oversees Broward Health also unanimously approved the dual CEO role at its own meeting Wednesday night.
“I feel excited — what a great opportunity,” Strum told the Miami Herald in a phone call Wednesday night after the vote, explaining that “both organizations are poised for more growth, recruiting more physicians and nurses and more collaboration throughout the county.”
Strum was already the CEO of Broward Health, the public health system that primarily serves northern Broward, when he was tapped back in 2024 to temporarily lead its much larger sister Memorial, which primarily serves southern Broward. Memorial operates six hospitals and various doctors’ offices and specialty centers, including for transplant, cancer and pediatric care at the renowned Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital, housed on the same Hollywood campus as Memorial Regional Hospital.
Both Memorial and Broward Health, which operates four hospitals and other centers in the county, are taxpayer-funded health systems that provide care to everyone, regardless of insurance status and ability to pay. Strum is the first person to be CEO of both health systems.
“We are go, go, go,” Strum said, explaining that he sees the board’s decision to change his title from interim CEO to permanent CEO as a sign of support. But it doesn’t change his plans for the future.
Under Strum, the two health systems are aggressively expanding into pockets of Broward where residents don’t have nearby access to care.
They’re collaborating more on patient care, with some employees now working for both health systems to expand treatment options, part of Strum’s collaboration vision. But Strum’s tenure has also brought leadership shakeups and physician and executive departures, including as recently as last month with the departure of Caitlin Stella, the CEO of Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital, and the resignation of Dr. Ronald Ford, the chief medical officer of the pediatric hospital, according to the South Florida Sun Sentinel. Strum described the end of Stella’s employment to the newspaper as part of a “reorganization” strategy that “lets Paul Gaden, the CEO of Memorial (our flagship), expand his oversight of the entire Memorial Regional Hospital campus, which includes Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital.” Other executives have received promotions.
Strum has indicated that he’s open to merging the two safety-net hospitals, which together have over 28,000 employees, telling the Miami Herald he believes the key to improving access to care, and the quality of care, is by having doctors at both health systems work together. He’ll need Florida’s Legislature to back the idea, but lawmakers don’t seem to have much of an appetite for an official merger — at least for now. A bill that would have streamlined the collaboration process between the two health systems failed to gain traction in Tallahassee again for the second consecutive year.
Shane Strum, the CEO of Broward Health and Memorial Healthcare System, believes collaboration between the two sister public health systems will be the key to improving access, and making care better, across the county. Carl Juste cjuste@miamiherald.com
His vision for a more united approach to care, which has led to the slogan “Better Together,” now also includes Nicklaus Children’s Health System, which is operating the pediatric hospital that’s on Broward Health’s Fort Lauderdale campus. Strum wants to bring together Memorial, Broward Health and Nicklaus pediatric specialists to create the largest pediatric health network in Florida. In August, physician leaders from the three health systems met to discuss the future of care, according to Strum.
While Strum saw an outpouring of support at the meetings, not everyone is on board. A 2025 Change.org petition reportedly organized by hospital employees to protest the now-failed bill that would have let the two health systems collaborate more seamlessly claims that Strum has “already begun dismantling Memorial from the inside.” The petition, which has garnered over 2,700 signatures, has comments from supporters, some of whom say they are patients and others who say they are employees, describing dwindling care and a work culture where “employees are afraid” and “everyone is concerned about the next layoff.”
Members of Memorial and Broward’s boards of commissioners see things differently.
Memorial’s board chair, Elizabeth Justen, said Strum’s time as interim CEO served as the “longest interview in Memorial history” and that he “understands the history, the people and the responsibilities” of Memorial, according to the South Florida Sun Sentinel.
It’s not clear yet how much Strum will make as Memorial’s permanent leader. Those negotiations will now begin.
The health executive had previously declined to receive a salary from Memorial when he was tapped to be its interim leader, receiving an annual salary of a dollar from the health system. Last year he received a compensation package of about $2.43 million as Broward Health CEO, according to the hospital.
That’s more than what his Miami-Dade counterpart, David Zambrana, the new CEO of Jackson Health System, brings in for leading Miami-Dade’s public health system, one of the largest in the nation, though it’s still less than what other South Florida hospital leaders make. Nonprofit hospitals and private for-profit hospital systems typically pay their top executives more than taxpayer-funded public hospitals.
Memorial’s board of commissioners plans to hire a firm to help determine how much to pay Strum, similar to how Jackson hired an independent firm to compare CEO pay levels across health systems similar in size and complexity to Jackson when determining the pay for its new CEO.
This story was originally published September 2, 2026 at 6:31 PM.
Miami Herald
Michelle Marchante covers the pulse of healthcare in South Florida and also the City of Coral Gables. Before that, she covered the COVID-19 pandemic, hurricanes, crime, education, entertainment and other topics in South Florida for the Herald as a breaking news reporter. She recently won first place in the health reporting category in the 2025 Sunshine State Awards for her coverage of Steward Health’s bankruptcy. An investigative series about the abrupt closure of a Miami heart transplant program led Michelle and her colleagues to be recognized as finalists in two 2024 Florida Sunshine State Award categories. She also won second place in the 73rd annual Green Eyeshade Awards for her consumer-focused healthcare stories and was part of the team of reporters who won a 2022 Pulitzer Prize for the Miami Herald’s breaking news coverage of the Surfside building collapse. Michelle graduated with honors from Florida International University and was a 2025 National Press Foundation Covering Workplace Mental Health fellow and a 2020-2021 Poynter-Koch Media & Journalism fellow.
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