The hospital’s CNO position had remained vacant for nearly a year after Denise Kvapil left the role in February 2025.
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Amid Saint Vincent Hospital’s ongoing leadership shakeup, the Worcester hospital has hired a former Steward Health Care executive as its new chief nursing officer.
Saint Vincent’s website now lists Michelle Kap as its CNO, a role she assumed in January, according to her LinkedIn profile. The hospital’s CNO position had remained vacant for nearly a year after Denise Kvapil left the role in February 2025.
WBJ has reached out to Saint Vincent for comment on Kap’s hiring.
Kap comes to Saint Vincent having most recently served as CNO of Central Maine Healthcare, a position she held for just over a year.
Before that, she worked at Texas-based Steward Healthcare for more than 16 years, most recently as the healthcare system’s vice president of clinical operations in Massachusetts, according to her profile and a March 27 press release from Central Maine Healthcare.
Steward Healthcare is the former operator of Nashoba Valley Medical Center in Ayer, a hospital the system closed in August 2024 after filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in May of that year.
State representatives, hospital workers, and community leaders protested the closure, warning that shuttering Nashoba Valley’s sole hospital would cause significant harm to the region’s patients and neighboring hospitals.
Before its closing, NVMC saw approximately 16,000 annual emergency room visits and about 91,000 annual outpatient visits. The closest hospitals now are Emerson Hospital in Concord and UMass Memorial HealthAlliance-Clinton Hospital’s Clinton and Leominster campuses.
As of November, all three facilities had experienced an approximately 10% increase in emergency department visits.
Kap’s hiring comes as Tenet Healthcare, Saint Vincent’s Dallas-based operator, is searching for a new CEO and chief human resources officer for the Worcester hospital.
Denten Park left the CEO position in December after less than a year on the job. Since then, Adam Bracks has stepped in on an interim basis and David Richards is currently serving as the hospital’s CHRO.
Mica Kanner-Mascolo is a staff writer at Worcester Business Journal, who primarily covers the healthcare, manufacturing, and higher education industries.
