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When Oregon State Hospital superintendent Dolly Matteucci retired in early 2024, state health officials turned to a small firm in Illinois to find her successor.
Spirit Consulting says it helps businesses find “transformational leaders” through a proprietary search process—involving recruitment, psychological assessment, and background checks. The firm was already contracted by the Oregon Health Authority to fill other top positions at the state’s key psychiatric hospital, and now it had an additional big task: find a new superintendent.
More than two years later, the state says it has hired the consulting firm for three distinct hospital superintendent searches. The first two failed. The third produced a hire from Washington state, but he didn’t last long: OHA fired him in August after a few weeks on the job.
Now, as the search for a leader of Oregon State Hospital begins once more, OHA tells WW it does not plan to enlist Spirit Consulting’s help this time.
But this pivot comes after the state agency says it paid the firm $171,714 for the three superintendent searches—a fraction of the hundreds of thousands of dollars the agency has paid Spirit Consulting to recruit leaders, mostly at OSH, since 2022.
The hospital, which has its main building in Salem and receives nearly all of its patients from the criminal justice system, has seen significant leadership churn in that period.
And as with the superintendent position, the outsourced searches have in key cases failed to produce a durable hire.
It is not uncommon for institutions to contract out executive searches to consulting firms. Oregon Health & Science University used an outside firm to recruit its current president, who has told WW he is committed to the institution for the long haul. OHSU also used a search firm to recruit the health system CEO it fired after only months on the job for “professionalism and communications issues.” A few weeks ago, the former CEO sued the institution for $15 million, alleging discrimination and retaliation.
Even though executive search firms’ efforts sometimes founder, some argue their work has substantial value.
“Forensic psychiatric hospitals like the Oregon State Hospital are complex institutions that require an experienced leader with a specialized skill set,” OHA spokeswoman Marsha Sills tells WW. Getting the best possible candidate pool, she adds, involves local job postings, a statewide recruitment effort, and “the use of specialized health care executive search consultants, who offer expertise in national recruitment for complex leadership positions.”
But public payments to these firms inevitably raise questions when the searches don’t work out. This is especially true if taxpayers don’t get a refund. (Spirit Consulting CEO Christopher Gomez tells WW that while the firm’s search fees are nonrefundable, it offers a replacement guarantee under specific circumstances. OHA says it is receiving no refund and that it is not launching a new recruitment with Spirit.)
Public spending on these sorts of arrangements isn’t always easy to track. Many Oregon contracts are posted to OregonBuys.gov, but some of the Spirit Consulting contract information on the site is incomplete.
The site lists two blanket contracts between OHA and the company since 2022 for executive recruitment, mostly at Oregon State Hospital.
The first lists a dollar limit of $1,025,000 and says $57,011 was spent to date. The other lists a dollar limit of $150,000 and says $38,809 was spent to date.
This would indicate the agency has since 2022 paid Spirit Consulting $95,820. But asked to confirm that total, OHA tells WW it has actually paid the search firm far more: $851,051.
Asked about the discrepancy, Sills says OregonBuys doesn’t include all state contracts. “Invoices are not always recorded in OregonBuys because not all agencies have fully implemented the system beyond its vendor registration and contract repository functions,” she writes. “Invoices must be paid through the OregonBuys system to appear in that system.”
Since 2022, Sills says, OHA has enlisted Spirit Consulting to fill 10 positions. These included numerous top jobs at Oregon State Hospital, among them chief medical officer, deputy chief medical officer, chief nursing officer, and three physicians.
OHA also used the firm to recruit for a separate role with no direct connection to the state hospital: health and policy analytics director. That last case is one example where the search produced a hire: Clare Pierce-Wrobel, who has stuck around since she came on in 2024.
Other recruitment efforts haven’t panned out. OHA’s initial 2022 contract with Spirit Consulting, for example, asked it to find a chief of psychiatry. Two years later, a contract amendment with the firm indicated the state hospital was still seeking a chief of psychiatry.
In time, the state did hire someone for that role—but he promptly resigned from this and his other posting as interim chief medical officer, a job the institution was also struggling to fill after the previous person in the position, Dr. Sara Walker, resigned while trying to balance that role with the job of interim superintendent.
The state has ended up filling some positions with people close to home. This past spring, the hospital found its present chief medical officer, Dr. Amit Bhavan, via an internal promotion. After Walker, the hospital’s acting superintendent came from within the Oregon Health Authority. He was promptly replaced as interim superintendent by former St. Charles Health System chief Jim Diegel while the national search for a permanent leader unfolded. (Diegel was reinstated as interim superintendent last month.)
Spirit Consulting charges tens of thousands of dollars for a single search, in which it assists the state with recruiting, hiring and onboarding, a review of the contracts shows. The firm’s fee was 20% of a given salary—though the figure increased to 25% by 2025.
OHA says all jobs are posted on Oregon’s Workday hiring webpages. But Spirit Consulting produced its own postings too. “Ready to make a difference?” said one of the firm’s posts on LinkedIn. “Are you a leader committed to behavioral health and equity? OSH is seeking our next superintendent.”
Several months later, the firm reposted the job. “We’re pleased to announce that Oregon State Hospital has once again retained Spirit Consulting to support two critical leadership searches,” the firm said, referring to the chief nursing officer and superintendent jobs. “We’re grateful for the continued trust and honored to serve again as Oregon State Hospital advances its mission of exceptional care and operational excellence.”
Now, weeks after the new hospital superintendent was removed, Oregon’s Workday site does not appear to include a job posting for his replacement. But OHA says it is indeed looking.
“As the search continues,” says spokeswoman Sills, “OSH interim superintendent Jim Diegel and the hospital’s leadership team continue the work underway for the past 15 months that prioritizes safety for patients and staff and focuses on clinical excellence for every patient.”
