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Iredell Health System has named John G. Green its new president & CEO. The former Iredell Health System chief operating officer replaces Ed Rush and becomes the Health System’s fifth president & CEO since its opening in 1954.

“I am excited and honored to have the opportunity to lead Iredell Health System at this pivotal time,” Green said. “Our Health System will continue to grow and will remain an independent, community-owned health system delivering excellent healthcare to our community.”

Green began his career as a licensed physical therapist, working in multiple states. As he developed from his task-focused role as a department leader into an executive role, the scope of his responsibilities expanded. During his transition from chief operating officer to CEO, his role continued to evolve from being operations-based to becoming more strategic-based.

“My role has changed and is continually changing,” he said. “My job now is to ask: What is the future of the organization? Where are we going, and how do we continue to grow and change?”

As the healthcare industry intensifies, now approaching 20 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product, Green will guide Iredell Health System to help it remain successful and play an important role in the new healthcare paradigm.

“At that expense, the target is on our back as it should be,” Green said. “This is a tumultuous and transformative time for healthcare, and I look forward to working with our 1,600+ employees and our community to continue to enhance and improve locally provided care.”

Green seeks to cultivate Iredell Health System’s activity in the community on state and federal levels and broaden understanding of healthcare policy. He hopes to help morph healthcare in the state to become more cost-effective, offering the most reasonable prices possible.

“It’s going to be a long process to reign in the costs of healthcare,” he said. “What we can solve is our component of it. The vision is to keep being creative forming a new healthcare system that allows folks to get care where they want it and when they want it at a reasonable price.”

Green recognizes different healthcare designs as being fraught with challenges, and the present national healthcare model as being unsustainable long term. The path to the right answer may be murky, but Green welcomes the challenge.

“To me, that’s the excitement of it. It’s not just doing the same thing today, tomorrow, and the next day. We are forming new and different ideas for the future,” he said.

As the leader of Iredell Health System, Green will focus on preparing distinct plans according to potential circumstances in the future of healthcare, considering multiple what-ifs in different scenarios. With a variety of concepts and approaching possibilities, the new CEO values Iredell Health System’s status as one of the 10 remaining independent, community-owned hospitals in North Carolina.

“We believe one of the advantages of our independent status is that we can be more nimble and more quick to change as these new models come out or as we want to create something new and different as opposed to relying on another organization in another city or state deciding for us what our community needs,” he said.

Alongside former boards of directors and CEOs, Green has remained steadfast in his belief that keeping Iredell Health System independent is the right thing for the local community.

“I am unabashedly nonprofit,” Green said. “I don’t want to fight for the profit margin. I want to fight to expand and provide the services we need to care for this community. That’s what our charter is.”

Green earned an MBA from the University of Akron and is a Fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives. He moved to Statesville with his wife Patti and their two children in 2001 and has remained actively involved in many facets of the community.

“We love this community and have found it to be a remarkable extended family,” Green said. “We have seen both of our children grow up through Iredell-Statesville Schools and go off to successfully graduate from undergrad and beyond. Iredell County is home.”