The following message was sent earlier today to department faculty and staff from Upinder Singh, MD, Chair and DEO of the Department of Internal Medicine.

It is my great pleasure to announce that Grant Worthington, MHA, MS, will be the Clinical Department Administrator (CDA) for the Department of Internal Medicine, effective February 3. He takes the position after serving as our interim CDA since July 2024, alongside our Associate CDA Kristin Goedken, MBA, who will remain in her role. We are grateful to them both for steering the department through this transition period.

There is no doubt that Worthington is the right person for the job, which carries it with the responsibility of managing the administrative and financial operations of the largest department on the University of Iowa campus. His twelve years spent working within the UI Health Care system has given him extensive experience and familiarity with the challenges and opportunities both at the department level and the broader institutional level.

While he has been serving as our interim CDA, Worthington has also maintained his role as Director of Ambulatory Operations for UI Health Care, a position he has held since April 2020. Hospital leadership is currently developing an interim coverage and recruitment plan for this role. As the director, he has overseen more than 20 clinical areas both on the university campus as well as our growing footprint beyond. Working alongside many of our system’s leaders, Worthington has been “in the room” for some of the most transformative moments in UI Health Care’s history. He led efforts to establish our onsite COVID-19 employee testing clinic, dramatically reducing the wait time on results during a critical need for staffing. He has also served as a core team member for the integration of our downtown campus (formerly Mercy Iowa City) and the Mission + Blood partnership, two fundamental elements in the next phase of our journey as a health system in the state.

Before stepping into that more centralized leadership role, Worthington served as CDA for the Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery for more than seven years. That period is marked by significant growth along nearly every metric, due in part to his methodical attention to fundamental elements. In just one measure, the U.S. News & World Report ranking, Otolaryngology rose from a respectable 13th in 2013 to 3rd in the nation in just five years. Worthington’s success here was also due to his close alignment with the department’s Chair & DEO’s vision and his ability to build bridges and open communication between stakeholder groups throughout the institution. He has shown the ability to adapt plans and processes to faculty and staff feedback, understanding that their input is integral for their support and any plan’s execution.

I am overwhelmingly confident that Worthington’s skillset and experience will be essential to transforming the Department of Internal Medicine into the leaders we will need to be in this new health care landscape. With his creative problem-solving and his deep roots and connections throughout UI Health Care, he will help move our department into the leadership role we must take to meet this moment. Please join me in welcoming Grant Worthington officially as a member of our department.