Stuart Wright, who has served as chief financial officer of Upstate University Hospital for more than 15 years, has been named to Becker’s Hospital Review’s 2023 list of 84 top academic medical center CFOs to know.
This is not the first time Wright has landed on this list. He made the list most recently in 2022 and 2019.
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 the growth of the enterprise from $500 million in annual revenues to more than $1.6 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 $170 million in revenues in five years, and drove a paradigm shift in the organization toward financial disciplines, which has resulted in the hospital earnings profits in nine of the past 10 years.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Wright was 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 the 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).
According to Becker’s, CFOs are key players in strategic financial planning, growth and partnerships for their organizations. These CFOs are responsible for the financial viability of their hospitals and health systems, and are crucial to the overall success of their respective organizations.
