VITAS Healthcare has appointed veteran healthcare leader Joel Wherley as Chief Operating Officer. Reporting to VITAS Chief Executive Officer Nick Westfall, Joel oversees operations of the company’s 44 hospice programs in 14 states, which care for more than 16,300 hospice patients and their families on a daily basis.
Joel has over 30 years of experience in healthcare sales and operations management, eight of them in hospice. He joined VITAS, the nation’s leading provider of end-of-life care, in 2016 as senior vice president of hospice operations, where he led daily operations for VITAS programs in Illinois, Kansas, Missouri and Texas. He earned a bachelor’s degree in business management and organizational design from the University of Illinois at Springfield.