Mazzoni Center president Sultan Shakir is leaving the Philadelphia LGBTQ health center this month

Mazzoni Center announced Wednesday that Sultan Shakir, president and CEO of the Philadelphia region’s largest LGBTQ health center for the past three years, is resigning effective March 31.

Shakir said he is returning to Washington, D.C., to be with his husband, in an internal note provided in advance to The Inquirer.

When Shakir came to Mazzoni in early 2022, he was the financially struggling nonprofit agency’s first permanent leader in three years. Mazzoni had gone through various rounds of organizational turmoil since 2017, when a former medical director resigned amid allegations of sexual misconduct with patients.

Financial struggles accelerated last year, when Mazzoni’s former CFO borrowed $714,385 without proper approvals to make payroll in September. The agreements required Mazzoni to pay back just over $1 million, which amounts to an interest rate of more than 40%. Mazzoni remains in litigation over those deals.

But in a Feb. 19 interview with The Inquirer, Shakir painted a picture of an organization that was recovering financially, even noting in a follow-up email last Wednesday that Mazzoni would be cash-flow positive for the month. That was the first time in years that the organization brought in more money than it spent, his email said.

The Mazzoni board appointed its secretary, Simon Trowell, to replace Shakir on an interim basis and will conduct a national search for a permanent replacement. Trowell retired two years ago as vice president for quality, capability, and risk management at GSK Research & Development in Collegeville.

Mazzoni’s latest audited statement, which is for the year that ended June 30, 2023, showed that it had a $3.5 million operating loss on $12.5 million in revenue. That loss was bigger than the $2.9 million deficit the year before. The organization remains significantly behind in its financial reporting.

Under Shakir’s leadership, Mazzoni took steps that are expected to significantly improve the financial condition of Mazzoni. They include hiring additional staff and adopting scheduling changes to enable the organization to see more new patients. Mazzoni also started participating in federal programs that will increase its revenue.

Because new patients take more time than existing patients, Mazzoni staff had a hard time accepting new patients under an old scheduling system, Shakir said in the Feb. 19 interview. Building new patient blocks into the schedule has paid off. Last year, the number of new patient visits at Mazzoni’s main site at 1348 Bainbridge St. increased to 2,016 from 693 the year before, according to data Shakir provided.

In November 2023, Mazzoni became certified as a type of clinic whose work expanding health-care access qualifies for higher Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement. But to take advantage of those new rates, Mazzoni had to renegotiate contracts with insurance companies that manage those benefits for people 65 and older and low-income individuals. Then, Mazzoni had to retroactively collect the higher rates from the insurers. One major insurer owed Mazzoni $1 million in catch-up payments by the time it was able to collect, Shakir said.

By becoming a so-called federally-qualified health center look-alike, Mazzoni also could expand its participation in a federal drug-discount program designed to support safety-net institutions that provide significant amounts of free or discounted care. This is the 340(b) program that allows health-care providers to acquire drugs at a discount, but collect full reimbursement from insurers.

Shakir highlighted as another improvement the efforts to integrate physical and mental health at Mazzoni. “Previously, you could access behavioral health, you could access medical care, but there wasn’t a lot of connection between the medical providers and the behavioral health providers.”

Editor’s note: This story was updated with additional information and comment.