Leo Kroonen, MD, plans to step down as chief of orthopedic surgery at Kaiser Permanente San Diego at the end of the year, according to an Oct. 15 LinkedIn post.
Dr. Kroonen has spent more than eight years in departmental leadership, including the past five and a half as orthopedic surgery chief.
Reflecting on his tenure, Dr. Kroonen described the challenges of leading change within a large healthcare organization, including navigating competing priorities and balancing accountability with decision-making authority.
“One of the hardest lessons I’ve learned is that being responsible for an outcome doesn’t always mean having the authority to shape it,” he wrote.
Dr. Kroonen, an orthopedic surgeon specializing in hand and upper extremity surgery, plans to return his focus more fully to clinical practice and to finding ways to make specialty care more accessible and effective.
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