Shane Strum, once the trusted right-hand man to Gov. Ron DeSantis, now wields a level of power never before seen in Broward County.

Nine months into his interim role, Strum is calling the shots as CEO of Memorial Healthcare System — a 17,400-employee public hospital district — for the symbolic salary of just $1 a year. At the same time, he’s still at the helm of Broward Health, the massive health care network that dominates the northern half of the county.

And yet, for all this influence, Strum doesn’t have a formal contract at Memorial. He works at the behest of the governor-appointed, seven-member board of commissioners, and they can terminate his employment at any time. So can he.

Strum, a Broward County native, is the only person to have ever simultaneously led both massive public health districts in their roughly 75-year history. His strategic direction helps determine how much every property owner in the county pays in taxes for healthcare, what type of healthcare patients receive at Broward County’s public hospitals, and where Broward Health and Memorial Healthcare System add medical services and new facilities. Strum has sway over hundreds of contracts, thousands of employees and billions in revenue.

Memorial’s board members say they are not conducting a search for a CEO and will likely offer Strum the job permanently on his one-year anniversary in September. Strum said he will likely accept.

“It’s a lot of power for one individual,” said David DiPietro, a Broward County attorney and a former board member of Broward Health. “One individual would be controlling nine hospitals, including every trauma hospital in Broward. That person will control how trauma is initiated throughout the county through the fire department and EMS. That person would have a budget bigger than the sheriff’s office, bigger than the airport authority, and bigger than the port authority. It might even be bigger than the county … the amount of money and control would be pretty exponential for somebody not elected.”

Unique to Strum are his deep political connections. He’s served multiple Republican governors (Charlie Crist, Rick Scott, Ron DeSantis) and helped shape policy at the highest state levels. This makes him adept at navigating Tallahassee politics, particularly with a current Republican governor and a majority-Republican Legislature. With his political skills and control over two large health care systems, Strum, at least for now, has become one of the most influential, yet unelected, figures in the region.

At 55, Strum walks fast, talks fast, and moves like a ball of energy, claiming he thrives on work. A married father with a teenage daughter, he’s raising her in Hollywood, where he grew up. His relentless drive fuels his leadership, and he often uses the word “excited” when describing the future of the two hospital systems. However, not everyone is excited about Strum’s authority, and some are outraged.

Broward faces a health care crossroads

This new consolidation of leadership and collaboration between the two health systems, with nearly 30,000 employees combined, has energized some and angered others. It comes as Broward healthcare is at a critical juncture: competition intensifies, Medicaid cuts mean the uninsured population is likely to grow, and technology requires more investment and training.

Broward is the only county in the state with two public health districts. Each board is run by seven political appointees — all chosen by the governor. Memorial currently has two unfilled seats. Both health systems aim to provide medical care to all populations, regardless of their capacity to pay. Memorial Healthcare System has consistently been more financially successful and operates every hospital in the southern part of Broward County. To the north, Broward Health serves a district with a larger percentage of low-income patients and more competition from for-profit hospitals. The two public health systems compete for doctors, nurses, donors and insured patients, whose coverage pays for much of the hospitals’ bills.

But should they compete? Would Broward patients benefit from the two health districts combining, with Strum as the leader of a mega health system? And, is now the right time for change?

Health care experts say that working as a single unit would position Broward Health and Memorial to cut costs, increase purchasing power, and offer better care to all patients in the county. They can’t legally negotiate deals together as separate taxing districts without a legislative change.

“We have a very large percentage of our population that lacks health insurance,” said Steven Ullmann, professor and director of the Center for Health Management and Policy at Miami Herbert Business School. “While Broward has two systems, I think what you’re seeing is that they themselves have realized that that’s not necessarily the best way to go about things because their mission is the same.”

For now, the taxpayer-funded Broward Health is picking up the tab for Strum’s leadership. He was hired at Broward Health in 2021 with an annual salary of $920,000, and bonus and other benefits for a total compensation package of $1.3 million. Since then his salary or his contract has been amended three times, but the specifics of the increased salary adjustments have not been released to the South Florida Sun Sentinel despite repeated public records requests, nor have they been disclosed at public meetings.

While steering Broward Health, with its four general hospitals and a children’s hospital, has always been a full-time job, its board has signed off on its leader also serving as the interim CEO of Memorial.

“I never saw any reason why the two systems were two systems,” said Nancy Gregoire, an attorney and member of Broward Health’s Board of Commissioners. “We did factor in that we are paying his salary. But we have spent years competing with Memorial, and that didn’t serve anybody’s good or purpose. People are always better cooperating with each other than challenging each other, and this is our opportunity to do that.”

Gregoire said decades of fighting haven’t been productive for either health system.

“Our boards fought with each other, our doctors and nurses fought with each other, and who suffers because of that? The taxpayers of Broward County. Now, all of a sudden, it’s like a new dawn,” she said. “I’m excited by it, and the time hasn’t come yet, but when the time does come to combine those two systems, you can bet I will be on the side of saying yes.”

At Broward Health, Strum took the top job in March 2021, just as the health system was beginning to stabilize after years of significant management turnover, compliance issues, and financial mismanagement. Over the past four years, Strum has improved Broward Health’s finances and credit ratings, expanded its clinical and academic footprint, and created a maternal health collaboration with Memorial called Better Together, according to reports presented to the Broward Health board.

Strum ruffles feathers at Memorial

Strum’s nine months at the helm of Memorial have been anything but smooth.

As interim CEO at Memorial, the board gave Strum a straightforward mandate: Examine every corner of a health care system with six hospitals in South Broward County — and make it better. In doing so, Strum has moved at what chair Liz Justen describes as “warp speed,” bringing remote employees back to the office, eliminating positions, firing and demoting executives at all levels, and renegotiating physician and vendor contracts to make them more beneficial for Memorial. Broward Health’s general counsel and chief operating officer now serve in those roles at Memorial as well.

Strum bulldozed into a system that had been well-funded and unmotivated to change.

Changes came with fallout: Some physicians have quit, one high-level doctor fired by Strum sued (but lost the challenge), and a Memorial board member resigned. The November 2024 announcement that Broward Health had entered a collaboration with Nicklaus Children’s Hospital of Miami rather than Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital, operated by Memorial, was seen as a betrayal by some physicians at Memorial. Terminated staff members told the South Florida Sun Sentinel that Strum has damaged morale and created an environment of fear in a system where culture has always been a priority, even calling the sit

“When there are changes that are determined to be important to be made and somebody makes them, they are probably not going to be a very popular person,” said Brad Friedman, a Memorial Healthcare board member.

Strum said he recognizes his fast-paced, aggressive style has caused angst.

“I’m a Broward guy. I’m going to stay here. I care about both systems. And if you give me a task, I’m going to get it done,” he said. “I think when you’re moving and making changes, you’re bound to have some dissent.”

Years ago, Strum worked at Memorial Healthcare System as senior vice president and had previously served on its board. He brushes aside the tension among staff and says he is focused on improving health care in Broward County, his longtime home.

“This place was complacent, not moving in the right direction, and stuck in the mud,” he said. “We have moved the place forward. Now, where we might have fallen out is on some of the communication. I move so fast that I sometimes forget we’ve got to go and hold hands and tell everybody the story. But because we’re so far behind in some areas, there’s no time for that. If we don’t catch up now, we’ll be overtaken by the competition.”

Almost daily, an anonymous critic who claims to represent Memorial doctors sends emails to news media, politicians, and Memorial Healthcare employees, writing angrily that Strum has dismantled organizational culture and fostered fear among employees.

Dan Lewis, a longtime critic of Broward Health, says Strum’s leadership at both organizations has made it more difficult for the public to get information, even at board meetings. “Everything is done in private briefings, nothing is done in public,” Lewis said. “He has eliminated transparency in both systems.”

Attorney George Platt, a prominent figure in Broward County’s legal and civic circles, says that leading two massive health systems serving the most vulnerable residents of Broward requires open communication and the expectation of pushback.

“Shane is obviously capable, a good organizer and generally respected,” Platt said. “But you know, any time you try to marry up two systems that are not identical, you’re going to have a bunch of challenges, not the least of which are your doctors who have opinions.”

Brett Cohen, a bariatric surgeon who chairs Memorial’s physician leadership council, said Strum swept in and made changes without communicating with physicians and staff, who were accustomed to being informed. “No one knew what to make of the changes or where it was going to land,” he said. “Some of the senior leadership was migrated out, and new leadership came in, and there wasn’t a lot of direction for us to know what was happening.”

Cohen said he took his complaints directly to Strum.

“I think once that was kind of ironed out and that communication became a little bit easier and more open, it became very obvious to everybody that it was a good change,” Cohen said. “I think the ability to grow and expand and take care of additional patients is what everybody’s been looking for, and I think that’s what’s made everybody much happier with the way things are going right now.”

Memorial, which has been the only health system in South Broward, now has competition. Baptist Health and HCA Florida Healthcare are opening freestanding emergency departments in Pembroke Pines.

“While no one was doing anything, the competition is incredibly bright and they know that this is a gem of a community, and they moved in,” Strum said. He says as interim CEO, he quickly pushed forward Memorial’s plans to build two free-standing emergency departments in South Broward.

Strum says he also moved Memorial forward on a $670 million new bed & surgical tower at its flagship Memorial Regional Hospital in Hollywood and created a marketing campaign for Memorial Cancer Institute.

Memorial’s board members say Strum is the right leader for the system and want to make him their permanent CEO.

“We really don’t have any reason to want to look anywhere else for someone that will do a better job for the community than he is,” said Memorial board member Steven Harvey.

“We are finally trying to get on the offense of all of the competition that’s coming into our market and really provide better and accessible health care for Broward County, and he’s making it happen,” said Justen, chair of the Memorial Healthcare System board of directors.

“Shane is the best CEO that this organization has ever had in my 25 years,” said board member Laura Raybin Miller. “I really think that he is the right person for the times, given where we are as a system. He understands the workings of the system and he’s able to get things done.”

The future of Broward health care

With both systems under one leader, speculation is rampant that Broward’s two health districts will merge.

Proposed bills in this year’s legislative session would have paved the way and allowed Broward County’s two taxpayer-supported hospital districts — Broward Health and Memorial Healthcare System — to go into a for-profit or not-for-profit business together without fear of violating state or federal antitrust laws. The bills did not get approved, yet they set off a furor, in part because they surfaced soon after a round of firings at Memorial.

Strum says he likely will float the bills again next year. He has no plans to attempt to merge the two systems at this time — a complicated process that would require agreement among the health district boards, local elected leaders and community stakeholders; a possible Broward County voter referendum; financial and legal plans for integrating assets, debts, and obligations; and a plan for how to handle taxes and governance, and new state legislation.

Yet, the politically aware leader of both systems said no one is ready for a merger.

“Look, so I’ve been here nine months. Look at how hard we’ve had to work to move the organization forward. And think about this, nobody likes change, right? It’s hard,” he said.

Whether a merger would benefit Broward patients is a matter of debate.

Ullman, the health care policy professor, notes that most hospital systems today are focused on expanding their footprint and becoming as efficient as possible. “These two Broward systems will need to provide the highest quality of care to their population in the most cost-effective manner, which is why a merger makes a fair amount of sense.”

DiPietro fears a merger would be detrimental to patient care: “It’s a real loss of say for the doctors over patient care. I think competition helps, and when you have less competition, you have more bureaucracy.”

Despite vocal critics, Strum says he sees a future with more collaboration between the two, including doctors credentialed to work at both health systems and residents and fellows doing rotations at both systems. He believes his political connections in Tallahassee will help Broward Health and Memorial Healthcare attract state research and grant funding.

“Everything we do can be devastated by politics,” said Broward Health Commissioner Ray Berry. “Shane is the right guy at the right time to keep that at bay. He isn’t going to let anyone in Tallahassee have sway over our health districts.”

Berry also notes that health systems face the looming impact of proposed federal Medicaid cuts, which would flow down to the state and put a strain on public hospitals. “This is an urgent call to become more efficient, more innovative and more business-savvy. Shane is the leader who can navigate both organizations through these turbulent times and ensure they continue to thrive.”

Strum said his goal, for now, is continued collaboration between the two health districts. “We want the best health and medical outcomes for all residents of Broward County, and to make sure that no families have to seek medical services outside of our county,” he said. “We have everything that we need here. We have to work together.”

Platt says what Broward health districts currently have is a “de facto consolidation” run by a politically connected leader. Eventually, a merger will be inevitable, he said.

“Those systems play a huge role in our county and they are going to continue to play a big role. l like the idea of doing this slowly,” he said. “You’ve got to learn how to walk before you can run, and so taking the time to work towards some kind of assimilation is good. I think there’s going to be a time when it just makes sense to take a local bill and go to Tallahassee and merge the two together. But I don’t think we’re there yet.”

South Florida Sun Sentinel health reporter Cindy Goodman can be reached at cgoodman@sunsentinel.com or 954-304-5908.

Shane Strum professional highlights

  • 2001-2009: Strum served as chairman of the South Broward Hospital District Board of Commissioners.

  • 2017-2018: Strum served as senior vice president of Memorial Healthcare System.

  • January 2019 – March 2021: Strum served as chief of staff to Gov. Ron DeSantis.

  • March 2021: Strum is chosen by the Broward Health board to become CEO, and negotiates a three-year contract worth $1.3 billion annually.

  • September 2024: Strum becomes interim CEO at Memorial Healthcare System for $1 a year.

  • October 2024: Broward Health approves a compensation increase for Strum.

  • November 2024: Strum issues a return-to-office mandate at Memorial, restructuring begins with VPs demoted and positions eliminated, physician contracts reduced from five years to three years.

  • February 2025: Better Together was announced, a maternal health partnership between Broward Health and Memorial Healthcare System.

  • February 2025: Bills proposed in Tallahassee to allow the two districts to enter into any venture, partnership, corporation, business entity or other arrangement regardless of the competitive consequences.

  • March 2025: Strum terminated more employees at Memorial, including some in key leadership positions, and changed the employee evaluation process at Memorial Healthcare System.

  • June 2025: Memorial announces a significant expansion at its flagship Hollywood hospital that had previously been stalled.