After a five-week search, the Cape Fear Valley Health System Board of Trustees named Daniel Weatherly as its new chief executive officer on Wednesday.
Weatherly will take charge of one of the region’s largest private, nonprofit health systems. The announcement brought a chorus of applause from trustees gathered in the administrative wing of the Cape Fear Valley Medical Center in Fayetteville.
“I’m humbled and very honored to be chosen,” Weatherly said. “It’s a professional and personal goal that I’ve always had to strive to do the best for the health system.”
Weatherly, 59, had been interim chief executive officer since Michael Nagowski announced his retirement in January after 18 years as the health system’s CEO.
Weatherly holds a master’s in business administration with a concentration in healthcare administration from the University of St. Francis. He first joined Cape Fear Valley Health in 2011 as its corporate director of outpatient services and growth.
Less than a year later, he became president of the health system’s Bladen Hospital in Elizabethtown. He moved on to work as president of Cape Fear Valley Harnett Health before his current roles as the health system’s chief operating officer and president of the medical center.
Weatherly had an extensive interview on Monday with the board’s candidacy selection committee, said Dr. Rakesh Gupta, committee chair and a retired gastroenterologist. He said members believed Weatherly’s history with the health system would provide the leadership needed to guide it into the future.
That future is a continuation of Nagowski’s legacy and Weatherly’s new vision for Cape Fear Valley Health, said Gupta, who also served on the committee to hire Nagowski.
“I feel like he has learned a lot from Mike,” Gupta said. “He sees that vision, but he also has his own strategy for patient experience and the growth of services that we need in order to become a true academic center.”
Academic medical centers combine hospitals and medical schools to provide training and research opportunities for students and physicians. The centers create the latest medical breakthroughs, produce the next generation of doctors, and increase access to care, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.
‘Looking Forward to the Workforce of the Future’
July marks the start of classes for Methodist University Cape Fear Valley Health School of Medicine’s first students. It will be the state’s fifth and newest medical school, and is a partnership between Methodist University and Cape Fear Valley Health.
The physicians who have already joined Cape Fear Valley Health because of the medical school, like cardiothoracic surgeon Dr. Ryan Huttinger, and those it will create will make a difference in the region, health system officials told CityView in January.
“We’re not only looking at being an excellent healthcare institution today,” Weatherly said on Wednesday, “but we’re looking forward to the workforce of the future and meeting the community’s needs for the future.”
Southeastern North Carolina is one of the unhealthiest regions in the state, according to County Health Rankings & Roadmaps. Residents have higher rates of diabetes and heart disease and lower birth weights.
And nearly every county in the region has a shortage of primary care and mental health providers, according to 2024 data compiled by the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services.
Through its partnership with Methodist University, Cape Fear Valley Health will offer medical school graduates its 350 residencies and fellowship positions.
Sixty-seven percent of medical school graduates who complete medical school and residency in North Carolina remain in the state to practice, according to research from the Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research at UNC-Chapel Hill. About 55% of Cape Fear Valley Health’s residents stay on to practice with the health system, according to Weatherly.
Future physicians will practice in an expanding Cape Fear Valley Health System. The health system boasts nearly 9,500 employees and serves residents in nine counties—Cumberland, Hoke, Harnett, Bladen, Robeson, Columbus, Sampson, Moore, and Scotland—across the southeast.
Dr. Sanjay Shah, board of trustees chair, said Cape Fear Valley Health was “a mom and pop budget model” when he joined as an anesthesiologist in 2001. Now, he said the health system operates like a four-star hotel, and that Weatherly can make it even better.
“He has this potential,” Shah said. “He has an appetite for more growth and, at the same time, good leadership.”
Weatherly oversaw intense growth as president of the medical center. After an initial expansion in 2022, the center nearly doubled its number of intensive care unit beds in 2024. It also got two new helipads. Weatherly said plans are in the works to expand the center’s patient services towers, which house the operating rooms, and the emergency department’s lobby.
Almost 10,000 patients will have been transferred to the medical center from other areas by the end of this year, Weatherly said. The medical center’s emergency department was the 20th busiest in the country last year, according to Becker’s Hospital Review.
The emergency department’s continued expansion could meet a Level II trauma designation. It’s a step up from the medical center’s current Level III designation and would let physicians treat more severe injuries locally. Cape Fear Valley Health applied for the designation last year.
“I’m very excited to continue the progress of the health system and working with our teammates here,” Weatherly said. “The folks that clean our rooms, that keep our patients safe, that nourish our patients, all the clinical folks—the physicians, the PAs, the nursing assistants—they’re why we’ve progressed so far, so quickly in the last 10 years, and we look forward to continuing that progress.”
Weatherly’s salary, his start date, and other details of his hiring as CEO were not available Thursday. When Nagowski announced his retirement, the hospital system said it was effective July 1.
In February, the board approved for Nagowski to work as the special assistant to the CEO.