Stefan Mooreland is chief executive officer of Valley Medical Group. He’s been working for VMG ever since it was Valley Internal Medicine, and he’s largely responsible for the group’s growth and acquisitions.
Stefan was raised in North Philadelphia. His mother was an RN at Albert Einstein and rode Stefan hard during his school years. As a benchwarmer on the basketball team, Stefan was part of an elite crowd at Cheyney University. He started to party hard and his grades plummeted. By his sophomore year, Stefan had flunked out and moved home, working at Temple as a custodian.
In May of 1984, Stefan was nearly killed in a driveby shooting. As he lay in the hospital, Stefan had an awakening. He realized he was throwing his life away, that his mother was the example he needed to follow.
He enrolled in the accounting program at Temple and for four years Stefan busted his rear end, eventually graduating with honors. In the meantime, he moved from custodian to desk clerk in the Temple E.R. to the billing department. When he graduated, Stefan looked outside of the city for a job and was hired at a large hospital in the Valley region as assistant director of patient billing.
It was 1989 and the managed care boom was just about to hit. Bright, capable patient accounting and billing managers were hard to come by. Stefan rose quickly through the ranks and pretty soon was in a director position. That’s when he got to know the president of Valley Internal Medicine (VIM), which would later become Valley Medical Group. An up-by-his-bootstraps guy like Stefan was just the kind of manager VIM wanted. In 1994, VIM made Stefan its vice president for finances and operations.
Stefan is now the CEO of Valley Medical Group (VMG). The group has expanded into internal medicine subspecialties, has 15 sites, and 49 physicians. A younger group of physicians is involved and they pose some new challenges. But they are also much more hands-off, willing to let Stefan and his office managers handle the details and hassles. Still, Stefan has to get used to a group of leaders who would rather go to a kid’s baseball game than a VMG board meeting. They also want the latest and greatest technology, which isn’t always fiscally possible.
Other points about Stefan Mooreland:
- While his mom refuses to move to the Allentown area, Stefan goes back frequently to visit. She still bugs him about getting married and settling down.
- People who made something of themselves, like Pam and Dr. McCready, hold a special place for Stefan.
- Andy Goday, on the other hand, seems like the kind of doctor who has had a lot handed to him.
- Stefan isn’t really sure what’s next for VMG. He sees the growth of the hospital-owned systems and he wonders how long they’ll be able to compete. Eventually, he suspects, VMG’s board will concede and sell out.