March 5, 2010 — Dr. David M. Barrett, president and chief executive officer of Lahey Clinic, a world-renowned nonprofit health care provider based in Burlington, announced that he will step down from the posts next January, but will remain in a new strategic leadership role through September 2012 as part of a succession plan.

Irving “Chip” Rogers III, board chair of the Lahey Clinic, said that under Barrett's leadership, “the clinic has emerged as one of the most financially stable health care organizations in a very competitive and challenging region. The time is right to start an orderly succession to position Lahey for the future.”

During Barrett's decade of leadership, Lahey Clinic completed facility expansions at its two medical centers in Burlington and Peabody, formed clinical partnerships with other area hospitals to provide specialty care, and strengthened its academic ties to Tufts University School of Medicine.

Barrett also presided over significant growth in services at Lahey, including steady increases in surgical cases, outpatient encounters and discharges over the past 10 years. Since 1999, the organization's operating revenue has increased more than 90%, to $833 million.

Barrett joined Lahey in September 1999, after a career as a physician, teacher, and administrator at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.

“I consider myself privileged to have served two of the finest health care institutions in the country,” Barrett said. “Lahey Clinic has practiced the same model of medicine as Mayo Clinic for more than 85 years. My goal has been to ensure it will continue that tradition for 80 more. I have confidence our board will find the right individual to continue the progress we've made over the past few years.”