Why Should Delaware Care?
ChristianaCare is Delaware’s largest hospital system. It is one of the state’s largest private employers, as well as a powerful political entity. Its current CEO announced she is retiring before the end of the year, and that her successor is rising from within the hospital’s own ranks.
Dr. Janice Nevin, the longtime president and CEO of Delaware’s largest hospital system, ChristianaCare, announced Tuesday that she is retiring at the end of the summer.
Nevin, who served in the top executive role for more than 12 years, will end her tenure as the hospital settles down following an expansion blitz.
Jenn Schwartz, the hospital’s executive vice president and chief strategy officer, will take her place in September.
In a statement announcing her retirement, Nevin said working as ChristianaCare’s CEO was the “greatest honor” of her career.
“Together, we have built an organization defined by love and excellence, and by an unwavering commitment to improving the health and well-being of those we are privileged to serve,” Nevin wrote.
Nevin’s announcement comes as the hospital expands both in and out of state and braces for federal cuts to Medicare and Medicaid, all while engaging in a bitter fight in the statehouse to oppose proposed primary care price cap legislation.
When asked why Nevin was retiring, a spokesperson said the decision was planned, and it followed a “long and extraordinary tenure.” The hospital did not make Schwartz available for an interview on Tuesday.
Still, Nevin will leave the role after having committed nearly $1 billion to health care infrastructure investments across Delaware. She also maneuvered the hospital closer to the Philadelphia market with clinics in the nearby suburbs and by securing a pediatric partnership with the prestigious Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
Nevin also gave the state a political black eye, coming out on top of a legal fight that led to the watering down of a hospital oversight board by removing its ability to veto hospital budgets it deemed excessive.
Who is Schwartz?
The incoming CEO, Schwartz, has worked for the hospital since 2018 in various legal roles. Before starting at ChristianaCare, she worked for various legal firms across New Jersey.
According to her LinkedIn, Schwartz also worked for the Lourdes Health System based in Camden, N.J., for more than a decade.
She left Lourdes shortly before it was acquired by regional health system Virtua Health, which also had a proposed merger deal with ChristianaCare last year. That deal ultimately fell through at the end of 2025.
Combining the current ChristianaCare and Virtua Health footprints would have created a system covering more than 10 contiguous counties in New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania and Maryland, with more than 600 facilities, nearly 30,000 employees and more than 500 residents and fellows.
The deal also would have required numerous regulatory sign-offs in both states, pitting potential hurdles to completing the deal. That included a review by attorneys general in Delaware and New Jersey because both systems are not-for-profits.
At ChristianaCare, Schwartz was hired as the health system’s chief legal officer in 2018, only holding that position for a year before being promoted to chief strategy officer. Schwartz held that position for nearly seven years before the hospital promoted her again to serve as executive vice president.
In the press release announcing the leadership transition, Schwartz said she looks forward to stepping into the role and advancing the mission of the hospital.
“This is an organization where purpose and performance are inseparable, and where caregivers bring our values to life in meaningful ways every day,” Schwartz said.
A changed ChristianaCare
Originally from England, Nevin came to Delaware as a teenager to attend the prestigious St. Andrew’s School in Middletown.
She later graduated from Harvard University and began her medical career at Thomas Jefferson University Medical College in Philadelphia. She moved to ChristianaCare in 2002 to become chair of the Department of Family and Community Medicine.
Nevin would later serve as executive director of ChristianaCare’s Wilmington Campus, where she led a $210 million transformation of the site. In 2014, she was named the first female CEO in the health system’s history.
Over the last decade, Nevin has changed the system in small and big ways, including removing the space in its name from Christiana Care to ChristianaCare and acquiring its first out-of-state hospital in Elkton, Md.
She also was a significant voice during the COVID pandemic, requiring that ChristianaCare staff be vaccinated to work with the public and encouraging the public to follow suit while also discussing the mental toll that the pandemic played on her workforce. The hospital famously was where then-President-elect Joe Biden received his first dose of the COVID vaccine on live TV.
By the time COVID ended, however, relationships had strained, and ChristianaCare became the first health system in Delaware to host a unionization movement among physicians. Nearly two years after the union won its vote, the health system has yet to ratify its first contract with them.
A legacy of expansion
At the end of the summer, Nevin will step down having left a legacy of regional expansion. But she also will leave ahead of a slew of challenges likely to upend hospital revenues statewide.
In recent months, the hospital has announced expansions both in and out of the state after saying last summer it would spend $865 million on new health facilities in the coming years.
The health care giant announced it aims to open a new $65 million campus in Georgetown in February. Months before that, it said it was building a health center dedicated to treating cancer in Middletown.
The health care system expects its new Georgetown facility — which would offer emergency beds, behavioral health care, specialty care and primary care — to open by 2028. It is partnering with health care-focused developer Emerus Holdings to build the facility at 20769 DuPont Blvd., just south of the Bridgeville Road intersection.
After the failed bid to merge with Southern New Jersey’s Virtua Health, the Georgetown plans could indicate that ChristianaCare sees more opportunity in its own backyard, and is willing to disregard the loose geographic monopolies that health care systems have enjoyed in Delaware for decades.
“This new campus will help close gaps in access by bringing high-quality, equitable and more convenient care directly into the community that needs it most,” Nevin said in a statement in February. “Our goal is simple: ensure that every Delawarean can access the care they need, in the right place at the right time.”
ChristianaCare’s new facility would also come as federal funds begin to flow into Delaware’s southern counties to support rural health, and the hospital system continues its expansion both in and outside the state.
Last month, ChristianaCare announced it is building a new $75 million inpatient rehabilitation facility for patients in need of physical, speech and occupational therapy near its Newark hospital.
The new 92,000‑square‑foot facility would open in the summer of 2028, offering 73 beds for rehabilitation services and creating 122 new jobs.
Its Middletown cancer center, which is slated to open in May 2027, would solidify its foothold in the suburbs south of the C&D Canal. The $92 million health center would bring primary care, behavioral health, pediatrics, neurology and cardiovascular care, among others.
Since 2020, ChristianaCare also has ventured deeper into the suburban Philadelphia health market, purchasing defunct hospitals and building its own in the surrounding towns. The hospital system announced last year it would partner with the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, better known as CHOP, leaving Delaware’s chief pediatric hospital, Nemours Children’s Health, on the sidelines.
Political fights
Nevin and ChristianaCare recently pulled away with a political win after a lawsuit they filed in 2024 to strip a hospital oversight board of its most powerful enforcement mechanism yielded a change to the law, watering down the power of that board.
Still, the system has another fight ahead before Nevin’s retirement.
In March, Delaware legislators introduced Senate Bill 1, a primary health care reform bill with price cap provisions. Soon after the state introduced the bill, the state’s hospital systems began their opposition campaign in force.
If the law passes as is, it would put a ceiling on how high hospitals can charge patients covered by state regulated insurance plans for care. The bill is currently awaiting a hearing in the Senate Finance Committee.
Nevin and the state’s hospital apparatus at large will likely continue to press ahead with their lobbying efforts against the bill in the coming months.
