Washington, DC – Jun 10, 2009 – Kenneth Samet, President and CEO of MedStar Health and Thomas Collamore, Chairman of the NRH Board of Directors, jointly announce that National Rehabilitation Hospital (NRH) Founder, President and Chief Executive Officer Ed Eckenhoff will be stepping down effective October 1. Current NRH Chief Operating Officer John Rockwood has been named President, succeeding Eckenhoff. Rockwood has been with NRH since 1992. NRH is a proud member of MedStar Health.

Eckenhoff, who founded NRH in 1986 and built it into one of the top rehabilitation hospitals in the nation, will continue at NRH as a full member of the NRH Board of Directors for a three-year term. In his new role as President Emeritus for the hospital, Eckenhoff will serve as a consultant to both the Board and the new President, chair the long-range planning effort, and continue to assist with fund raising efforts.

In Eckenhoff’s 27 years at NRH, he helped to create the only comprehensive, free-standing rehabilitation hospital benefiting the residents of Washington, D.C., suburban Maryland and Northern Virginia.

“It has been the pleasure of a lifetime to help build this great institution,” said Eckenhoff, who came to the Washington, D.C. area from Chicago where he worked as the Administrator for the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago. "We have seen NRH grow from a single hospital to The NRH Medical Rehabilitation Network providing inpatient, day treatment and outpatient services at almost 40 locations. The staff has been the finest and our efforts, together over these 23 years, have been extraordinary."

Some of the highlights of Eckenhoff’s tenure at NRH since ground was broken for the hospital in 1984, on the Washington Hospital Center campus, include:

• Consistently ranked by physicians as one of the top hospitals in U.S. News & World Report for 14 years and counting
• The development of one of the most robust and best funded rehabilitation research centers in the country
• Development and growth of NRH Regional Rehab, an outpatient delivery system with nearly 40 locations in D.C., Maryland and Northern Virginia
• NRH’s Spinal Cord Injury Program recognition as one of only 14 Model System SCI (Spinal Cord Injury) programs by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research
• Securing the only Commission on Accreditation of Rehabilitation Facilities (CARF) accredited specialty program for both Spinal Cord Injury and Stroke in the Mid-Atlantic region.