July 24, 2023

Former Sanford Health chief financial officer Michelle Bruhn is the new CFO at Phoenix Children’s.

The Arizona organization markets itself as one of the nation’s fastest-growing pediatric health systems. Bruhn started her new role last week and will oversee finance, treasury, revenue cycle and managed care contracting.

She also is directly responsible for fiscal policy, performance goals and planning for the growing health system.

“We conducted an exhaustive national search to find the right person to fulfill this role at a particularly critical time,” Robert Meyer, president and CEO of Phoenix Children’s, said in a statement. “Michelle’s experience makes her an ideal addition to our leadership team. She will serve as a key adviser during Phoenix Children’s continued period of significant growth.”

Phoenix Children’s has two hospitals, five pediatric specialty and urgent care centers, 11 community pediatric practices, 20 outpatient clinics, two ambulatory surgery centers and seven community-service-related outpatient clinics across Arizona. It’s building two more hospitals and a specialty and urgent care center and is expanding at its main campus. Phoenix Children’s Care Network includes more than 1,175 pediatric primary care providers and specialists.

Before joining Phoenix Children’s, Bruhn served as executive vice president, CFO and treasurer for Sanford Health, which has $7 billion in annual revenue, 47 medical centers, 2,800 physicians and advanced practice providers, 170 clinical investigators and a health plan with more than 220,000 members.

She had a 24-year career there and was not identified in the post-merger leadership team released by Sanford and Fairview Health Services earlier this year.

The merger has no target date to close.

For now, longtime Sanford executive Bill Marlette has come out of retirement to temporarily serve as CFO. He retired a couple of years ago after more than 30 years with the system.