Bracing for spike — New CFO aims to strengthen hospital finances
Warning that rural health care is “under attack,” Weston County Health Services’ newly hired chief financial officer says he is coming to Newcastle to help the hospital brace for a potential spike in insurance premiums and to strengthen its financial footing. Paul Maiellano, whose background spans private equity, major hospital systems and military service, began work Nov. 17, CEO Cathy Harshbarger told the News Letter Journal.
Harshbarger said his salary is $190,000, plus the benefits hospital employees receive, and that he will receive relocation expenses, which she has estimated at $5,000. She
said she believes Maiellano will bring innovation to WCHS.
“I think that he’ll professionalize the business components of our business,” she said.
Maiellano told the NLJ that he is moving from Philadelphia to Wyoming.
“I have deep motivations for pursuing a leadership role in a rural health care setting,” Maiellano told the NLJ. “My goal is to save rural health care through good fiscal discipline without sacrificing quality of care for our patients and residents.”
Maiellano has a Bachelor of Business Administration in finance and economics from Temple University, a Master of Business Administration in finance from Rutgers University’s Rutgers Business School and a Master of Science in Business Analytics from Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business.
Maiellano told the hospital district board of trustees at its Nov. 20 meeting, where he was introduced, that his background centers on finance, data and analytics and that his experience spans private equity, investment banking, health care operations and revenue cycle management, including work with both small ambulatory centers and major hospital systems, such as George Washington University’s healthcare system.
“I came here because I really believe that health care in rural America is under attack,” Maiellano told the board.
He told the NLJ that he believes Congress will vote between Dec. 9 and Jan. 30, 2026, whether to continue subsidies for health care premiums.
“Without continuation of the Obama-Era payer subsidies, healthcare insurance rates will dramatically increase,” he told the NLJ. “As a rural hospital serving a diverse population, we need to be a proactive facility insofar as to manage care more effectively, drive health and wellness programs for early detection, and develop and foster relationships with payers so they better know and understand the populations they’re covering.”
Maiellano told the board he came to WCHS because he wants to use his skills to support the community.
“Premiums are about to skyrocket, and the most vulnerable populations are about to get crushed,” he said. “I wanted to bring my skill set from Wall Street all the way here to help everyone understand how we can do better financially and do well by our constituents and our patients, people of Weston County.”
He told the board he is confident he can accurately complete the “litany of financial stuff that we have to cut through.”
“I look forward to having a posture of compliance and complete transparency, not only with the board but with our citizens, and make sure that no mistakes happen in the future in the finance function,” he said.
According to a biography that WCHS sent the NLJ on Nov. 17, Maiellano’s career before joining the hospital system included work in health care finance, analytics and military leadership. He founded Vanguard Analytics, a firm that specializes in advanced data solutions for health care. He also led middle-market health care merger and acquisition as vice president at pH Partners, a boutique transaction advisory firm headquartered in Austin, Texas.
He previously worked as a mergers and acquisitions analyst with Universal Health Services, which is headquartered in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, and supported the FOREX trading desk at U.S. Bank. At TerrAscend, which is headquartered in Union City, New Jersey, he worked on market entry strategy and mergers and acquisitions. He also served in the U.S. Army as a weapons team leader, leading soldiers on deployments to Africa and assisting with peacekeeping operations in South Korea.
“His military service continues to shape his leadership philosophy — grounded in discipline, accountability and service,” the notice said.
Harshbarger told the NLJ that she was struck by the diverse nature of Maiellano’s background, noting his experience in mergers, acquisitions, finance, analytics and banking, and the fact that he is able to perform financial modeling. She said those skills will strengthen the hospital’s ability to evaluate opportunities for growth.
“We’re still working on the pathway to making sure that our financials look the way we need them to going forward, and so I look forward to him building some dashboards and making sure that our financial picture is even more accurate than it is today, because we still have some work to do there,” Harshbarger said.