Caron Treatment Centers CEO Bradley Sorte is stepping down from his post.
The Wernersville, Pennsylvania-based nonprofit addiction treatment provider announced Thursday that Sorte, who also held the title of president, will step down at the end of February.
Kristine Bashore, chief operating officer, and David Rotenberg, chief clinical officer, will split the roles of CEO and president on an interim basis. Meanwhile, Caron Treatment Centers is conducting a national executive search for a new CEO.
While the organization didn’t detail why Sorte is stepping down, it noted Sorte was prioritizing time with his family.
“I strongly believe in Caron’s mission, but now am of the belief that I can serve it better in a different capacity,” Sorte said in the release. “This was a very difficult decision, but I know that it is what’s best at this time. I will forever be appreciative of the opportunity to have been CEO of the organization that saved my life.”
Sorte will serve as a senior advisor for the company following the end of his CEO tenure until Aug. 31.
“We respect Brad’s decision to put his family first in his deliberations, and on behalf of the Caron community, I thank him for his wide-ranging contributions to Caron and the treatment field,” Dr. Thomas F. Flynn, chair of Caron Treatment Center’s board of trustees, said in the release.
Sorte first became a therapist at a Boca Raton, Florida-based Caron clinic in 2011, according to his LinkedIn page. He took on increasingly significant roles in the organization until he became the chief strategy and growth officer in June 2020 and was named as the successor of long-time Caron CEO Doug Tieman in August 2020.
Sorte took over the role without the involvement of Tieman in July 2021.
The company has recently expanded in Florida. It announced at the end of January that Caron Florida, which operates in Boca Raton and Delray Beach, added a new mental health program.
It also opened The Keele Medical Center at the end of January. The center includes a medical detox unit, 40 beds for residential treatment programming, a program for seniors, neurocognitive services, research and medical education.
Moves like opening The Keele Medical Center and the Fran and Doug Tieman Center for Research, which opened in June, on its HQ campus, on top of a focus on cutting-edge clinical and business practices, are meant to solidify Caron as the “Mayo Clinic of addiction treatment.”
At the end of 2021, Sorte told Behavioral Health Business that he expected Caron Treatment Centers to discover greater value in its care via value-based care relationships with payers and deeper investments in technology and research.
In addition to the Pennsylvania campus, Caron provides services in Palm Beach County, Florida, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Atlanta, and New York City.
The organization employed 755 people in the fiscal year that ended in June 2021 and generated $101.6 million in revenue, according to its latest public financial filing.
