Stuart Wright named to Becker’s list of 75 academic medical center CFOs to know
Stuart Wright, who has served as chief financial officer of Upstate University Hospital for nearly 15 years, has been named to Becker’s Hospital Review’s 2022 list of 75 top academic medical center CFOs to know.
As CFO, Wright oversees all financial functions for the hospital as well as patient access services, utilization management and retail/contract pharmacy operations. Among Wright’s accomplishments during his tenure as CFO is his role in facilitating and driving growth of the enterprise from $500 million in annual revenues to now more than $1.4 billion. Part of this growth was related to his key role in the successful acquisition and integration of Community General Hospital. He also led an organization wide re-engineering of revenue cycle processes, facilitated the growth of our retail pharmacy operations to over $100 million in revenues in 3 years, and drove a paradigm shift in the organization toward financial disciplines, which has resulted in the hospital earnings profits in seven of the past nine years despite steep cuts to state support.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Wright has been instrumental in monitoring hospital finances, ensuring funding for needed resources to fight the pandemic and working closely with the state and federal governments to address the financial implications of COVID-19 on hospitals and promoting appropriate methodologies for distribution of funds.
Prior to joining Upstate University Hospital, Wright served in other divisional CFO roles for both Cigna, Inc (a national healthcare insurer) and Empire Blue Cross (a Medicare fiscal intermediary).
Becker’s Hospital Review is a leading publication covering hospitals and health systems.