Executive Search Success Story: Recruiting a COO for a PE-Backed Healthcare Services Platform

How JRG Partners ran a confidential COO search for a private equity-backed healthcare platform operating hundreds of locations.

This was a private equity-backed value-creation mandate; ownership and identifying details are withheld at the client’s request.

The Challenge

A private equity-backed healthcare services platform operating hundreds of locations across multiple states was scaling rapidly. It needed a COO to standardize operations, integrate acquisitions, and improve profitability. Leadership identified several operational and financial pressures:

• Operational inconsistencies and performance variations across dispersed locations
• Difficulty seamlessly integrating newly acquired regional healthcare businesses
• Rising labor costs and operational overhead compressing overall margins
• A critical need for standardized performance metrics and data-driven KPIs
• Succession concerns and capability gaps among regional operational leadership
• Increased pressure from board sponsors to rapidly improve EBITDA and platform profitability

The board and sponsor set out to recruit a Chief Operating Officer (COO) — a leader spanning multi-site operations, M&A integration, and corporate profitability. The organization required a talent partner with deep, specialized healthcare operations search expertise.

Why They Chose JRG Partners

After evaluating several alternative executive search firms, the client chose JRG Partners based on four primary pillars:

Deep Healthcare Operations Specialization

Our dedicated search practices span multi-site healthcare operations, post-merger integration, and investor-backed value creation frameworks.

Real Access to Passive Talent

Many of the strongest healthcare operations leaders are actively managing successful platforms and are rarely active job seekers. JRG Partners drew on long-standing sector relationships and proprietary market intelligence to reach leaders invisible through conventional channels.

Confidential Search Execution

With aggressive acquisition integration timelines underway, we executed a highly discreet process that successfully protected operational continuity, clinician morale, and investor confidence.

Broad Reach

The targeted search successfully leveraged built-in relationships throughout the national healthcare services and multi-site operations leadership markets.

Our Executive Search Strategy

Phase 1 — Leadership Assessment

We worked directly with the board and executive team to map existing organizational gaps, succession risks, growth objectives, and the exact competencies the business would need as it scaled. The candidate profile was built strategically against the company’s long-term value creation plan rather than a legacy job description.

Phase 2 — Market Mapping

JRG Partners conducted a targeted search mapping across healthcare services organizations, multi-site clinical platforms, private equity-backed healthcare companies, regional provider networks, and national healthcare operators. More than 650 senior executive profiles were systematically evaluated.

Phase 3 — Executive Engagement

Our consultants discreetly engaged prospective leaders with proven records of standardizing multi-site healthcare operations, advancing only candidates with clear, measurable impact on patient access and margin expansion.

Phase 4 — Assessment & Selection

Each finalist underwent an extensive evaluation process covering strategic and functional capability, executive leadership and clinical team-building history, cultural alignment, and long-term platform retention.