Columbia Los Robles Hospital Names Chief Executive Officer

THOUSAND OAKS — Columbia Los Robles Hospital has tapped an executive from its parent company as its new chief executive officer, a man with 20 years’ experience in medical services and hospital management.

Robert C. Shaw, who begins his new post Sept. 29, was most recently chief operational officer for Columbia/HCA’s Pacific Division, overseeing the operational strategies of 17 hospitals in California.

“We’re really excited to have him,” Los Robles Hospital spokeswoman Kris Carraway said.

Before joining Columbia, Shaw was president and chief executive at Irvine Medical Center, which was awarded the Sterling Award for Quality and was named the Irvine Business of the Year in 1995, according to Susan Whitten, a spokeswoman for Columbia/HCA Southern California Division.

Shaw, who will relocate to Thousand Oaks from Orange County, replaces Ronald Phelps, who was recently selected as president of Columbia/HCA’s Southern California Division.

After earning a bachelor of science degree in pharmacy from the University of Connecticut, Shaw began his health-care career as a pharmacist at the Yale-New Haven Medical Center in Connecticut. Shaw also received an MBA from Cornell University’s graduate school of business and public administration.

In 1969, he joined the City of Hope Medical Center in Duarte and was involved in its $18-million expansion and construction program. Shaw also helped expand the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles into a 1,120-bed hospital, Whitten said. For eight years, he was president and CEO at the Robert F. Kennedy Medical Center in Hawthorne.

An acute rehabilitation department is expected to open at Columbia Los Robles in the spring. It will feature an 11-bed unit for people who have suffered injuries, such as head and spinal trauma, 17 to 19 beds for patients 65 and older who have psychiatric and medical problems, as well as a 43-bed transitional care unit for those who are recovering but are not well enough to return home.

The Ventura Heart Institute, now situated at Columbia Los Robles Hospital, also will be moved to the new center along with the hospital’s cardiac rehabilitation department, now on Hampshire Road. The relocation is intended to provide an aquatic program for physical therapy patients.