ITHACA, N.Y. — Centralus Health’s chief executive officer will leave his position in November, he announced to staff on Wednesday.
Dr. Martin Stallone has led the health system since 2019. Stallone will depart on Nov. 7, 2025, the organization announced Thursday. He has accepted an executive vice president position with The Lifetime Healthcare Companies, the parent company of health insurer Excellus BlueCross BlueShield, which will begin on Dec. 1, according to an internal email Stallone sent to staff members Wednesday evening.
Stallone serves as the CEO of Cayuga Health and Centralus Health, a healthcare partnership formed through the merger of Cayuga Health and Arnot Health in January.
“This was not an easy decision, as it has been a privilege and an honor to serve alongside you,” Stallone wrote in his email to staff. “With the increasing challenges Centralus Health, and other systems like ours are facing, I believe my new role will allow me to develop even more impactful strategies to keep health services robust and accessible to those living in rural communities across upstate New York, including ours.”
Rob Lawlis has already been unanimously appointed to take over the job permanently from Stallone. Lawlis, who is currently serving simultaneously as chief executive officer of two Centralus Health-related organizations, was first hired by Cayuga Health in 2008.
While the announcement was abrupt, it was characterized as “part of a long-standing succession plan designed to ensure stability, continuity and continued growth.”
“We will continue to optimize the advanced systems recently implemented to make better decisions to care for our community and control costs; realize and maximize efficiencies from [the] affiliation of Arnot Health and Cayuga Health; and identify additional innovative solutions that keep the delivery of healthcare local,” Lawlis said in an announcement from the organization.
Stallone’s tenure has been most visibly marked by an aggressive growth strategy, which culminated in the January merger between Elmira-based Arnot Health and Cayuga Health. The two organizations merged to form Centralus Health, covering nine counties and providing over $1 billion in medical services per year.
Leading up to that, the former Cayuga Health System spent much of the last two-plus years vacuuming up other medical practices around the area under the Cayuga Health umbrella. Arleo Eye Associates, Family Medicine Associates of Ithaca, Dryden Family Medicine, Cayuga Addiction Recovery Services and Visiting Nurse Service of Ithaca and Tompkins County have all become affiliated with Cayuga Health since December 2022.
Centralus Health is also in the middle of building a crisis stabilization center at the Shops at Ithaca Mall, a multimillion project that was helped by $1.5 million in funds from the Tompkins Community Recovery Fund.
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