Houston Methodist The Woodlands Hospital announces leadership changes

THE WOODLANDS, TX – In a September 28 email obtained by Woodlands Online, Marc L. Boom, president and CEO of Houston Methodist, announced leadership changes at Houston Methodist The Woodlands Hospital.

“As announced last week, Debbie Sukin, Ph.D., executive vice president and CEO of Houston Methodist The Woodlands Hospital, is leaving her post in January to become president of Texas Children’s. As a result of her departure, I am announcing two exciting leadership changes. We are promoting Chris Siebenaler, executive vice president and CEO of Houston Methodist Sugar Land, into a new role of executive vice president of network hospitals, which means the CEOs of our hospitals outside of the Texas Medical Center will report to him beginning January 1.”

David Bernard, currently CEO of Houston Methodist Baytown, will replace Debbie at Houston Methodist The Woodlands on January 1, 2024. With the resultant CEO positions at HMSL and HMB being available, Boom announced an immediate search internally and externally for their successors.

“Chris has been with Houston Methodist since 2001, first at Methodist Diagnostic Hospital and then HMB, before joining HMSL as CEO in 2007. Since he began his career at Houston Methodist, Chris has taken on more responsibilities every year and has done an excellent and admirable job in each of his roles,” said Boom. “We established this new position because we are always working to better align our hospitals to create one unified Houston Methodist experience. This new role helps accomplish that, making it easier to knit our outstanding community hospitals together as we all continue to provide leading medicine to our communities. His talents, expertise and ability to lead system initiatives make Chris a perfect fit for this new role.”

As for Bernard, Boom said, “David has also served Houston Methodist for many years, first starting his career here in 2000 as an administrative fellow. He worked his way up to vice president at Houston Methodist Hospital and served in this role for over 12 years until he was promoted to lead HM Baytown in 2015. David is perfect for the HMTW CEO job. In the past eight years, Baytown has thrived, recently rising from No. 104 in Vizient’s quality and safety rankings to No. 2 for two consecutive years. Not only has he led the improvement of care but has shared his talents and passions to rally the hospital’s employees and physicians around a shared mission. David is a very experienced leader and HMTW will be in great hands. I am excited to see what David can accomplish there.”

The email concluded with Boom looking forward to the changes for the better at Houston Methodist on the horizon. “We are very fortunate that Houston Methodist has so many talented leaders who develop leadership skills while on the job and can quickly be promoted into open roles. It is a gift that we can look within the organization to fill many of these important positions with leaders who know our organization,” he said. “David and Chris lead with their I CARE values and deeply understand Houston Methodist and our commitment to serve our patients. We are lucky to have both in these leadership positions going forward.”

Stay tuned to Woodlands Online for further developments as they occur.