Robert Rowling Jr. has been named chief executive officer of Origins Behavioral HealthCare, replacing Drew Rothermel, who held the position since April 2014. Rowling is part of the family that owns Origins’ parent company, TRT Holdings, which purchased Origins last year.

“Our strategy has not really changed,” Rowling tells Behavioral Healthcare Executive. “We’ve been in the process for the past eight months of optimizing what we have and all of our operations.”

TRT has owned Gaston House in Dallas, a sober home for men, for more than a decade, but prior to the Origins acquisition, that was its only healthcare investment. Rowling says TRT is looking to grow and potentially has some other deals in the pipeline.

“Certainly we’re looking to expand our footprint outside of Florida and Texas, and we’re in active talks with a couple companies,” he says.

State regulators in Florida have seemingly turned a corner on overseeing the local addiction treatment market, cracking down on patient brokering and deceptive marketing practices with new regulations and tough penalties for a variety of offenses. Rowling says he welcomes the state’s new marketing and referral standards.

“Thankfully we acquired a company that acts above reproach and with integrity,” he says. “We’ll continue to do so in everything from how we market digitally in media and [search engine optimization] as well as with our folks on the ground. We’ll continue to present what we have and who we are and be transparent about it.”

As CEO, Rowling says he aims to maintain a stable platform with a solid leadership team. As with TRT’s other brands—Omni Hotels & Resorts and Gold’s Gym—the company has sought to be an employer of choice in an especially competitive hiring sector. Rowling acknowledges that burnout is a serious issue in behavioral health, so being a preferred employer is a fairly lofty goal.

Origins also has added a new leadership title—vice president of people—and hired Jared Fuson in that role, who is a licensed counselor and also has professional experience in human resource management.

A number of other senior level changes were also announced recently at Origins:

• John Dyben, DHSc, MCAP, CMHP, formerly Origins clinical fellow, has been promoted to chief clinical officer.
• Brad Bean, formerly the vice president of operations, was promoted to chief operations officer.
• Glenn Gill has been added as the vice president of marketing and brand development.