Pine Rest Names CEO

CUTLERVILLE—“Interim” will be removed from Mark Eastburg’s title, as the Pine Rest Christian Mental Health Services board of directors last week named him president and CEO.

Eastburg, 46, has worked in a variety of roles at Pine Rest for 16 years, said Jan Winters, chair of the organization’s board of directors. He has been interim president and CEO since March.

“I’m looking forward to leading the organization as it lives out its values into our second century of service to the community,” Eastburg said.

Maintaining quality amid “tight operating margins” and a difficult local economy is among the challenges Eastburg said he expects to face as the 96-year-old behavioral health services provider moves ahead.

“One of the goals that I, the board and staff members have talked about is a renewed focus on quality in terms of measuring the things we do, demonstrating outcomes that we can report that to the community,” Eastburg said. “Medicine is moving toward evidence-based practice, demonstrating the value of what you do. We need to be part of that important trend.”

Eastburg replaces Dan Holwerda, who left Pine Rest in March to become chief operating officer at Metro Health in Grand Rapids

“What impressed the search committee was the vision he had for Pine Rest to really take us to the next level,” Winters said. “He is ready and willing to do that. He has an intimate understanding of the staff at Pine Rest and what our resources are. He has the support not only of physicians and staff of Pine Rest, but of the West Michigan health care community, and that is crucial.”

Winters said the board conducted a nationwide search, but in the end settled on an in-house candidate.

“We have the good fortune of being the largest free-standing behavioral health provider in Michigan and one of the five largest in the U.S. We are continually working to bring the highest level of care to those that come to us, and Mark, with his clinical expertise and his understanding of Pine Rest, gives us the background that’s necessary to bring us into the future, to help us get to that next level.”

Pine Rest operates a 200-acre campus in Cutlerville and has 23 clinics in Michigan and Iowa and 1,200 employees. It offers a variety of mental health services, from inpatient to outpatient counseling and therapy and addictions treatment. The organization runs under the philosophy of the Christian Reformed Church.

Eastburg started at Pine Rest in 1990 with an internship in clinical psychology. He’s also worked with the Attention Deficit Disorder Institute, as director of the PsychologicalConsultationCenter and clinical/corporate director of Pine Rest’s Professional Practice Group of outpatient clinical staff.

Eastburg’s executive-level experience with Pine Rest includes work as director of mission effectiveness, director of new program development, executive director of Pine Rest Family Institute, and executive director of Healthy Marriages Grand Rapids. In addition, he has served for seven years as director of psycho-oncology with the RichardLacksCancerCenter at Saint Mary’s Health Care.

In addition to serving as chief executive officer, Eastburg also will serve as chairman of Pine Rest’s executive council, consisting of eight senior leaders from the outpatient, inpatient and residential service areas of the organization.

Since 1991, Eastburg also has maintained a Pine Rest outpatient clinical practice in individual and couples therapy, and provided psychological assessments to a variety of churches and agencies.

Eastburg, born and raised in California, also worked in Los Angeles, Pasadena and Camarillo. He also served as a teaching assistant and supervisor at Fuller Graduate School of Psychology and Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena

Eastburg is also a published national author and has written extensively throughout his career. He has published essays for a number of scholarly journals.