Roper St. Francis Healthcare has hired Dr. Jeffrey DiLisi, a senior executive at a Virginia teaching hospital, as its president and CEO, ending a search that has stretched across most of a year.

DiLisi will start Dec. 7, the health system said Tuesday. He will be the first physician to lead Roper St. Francis, which runs four hospitals in the Charleston region.

DiLisi is senior vice president and chief medical officer of Virginia Hospital Center, a 394-bed not-for-profit teaching hospital in Arlington, Virginia, according to Roper St. Francis. He has worked there for 11 years, The Post and Courier reported. Roper said he led the hospital’s successful application to join the Mayo Clinic Care Network and oversaw areas accounting for 60% of its revenue.

“Roper St. Francis Healthcare is a flourishing healthcare system with a history of service to the community, and I could not be more honored to join this team at this moment in its history,” DiLisi said.

He said he plans to draw on the resources of Bon Secours Mercy Health, which owns Roper St. Francis with the Medical Society of South Carolina. “I look forward to utilizing Bon Secours Mercy Health’s knowledge and expertise so that Roper St. Francis Healthcare is a model for delivering high-quality care at an affordable cost to patients,” he said.

The top job has been vacant for a year, The Post and Courier reported. Lorraine Lutton’s departure as CEO was announced last October, along with a shake-up of the system’s ownership. In April, Roper St. Francis said it had hired Brian White, a former group president at one of its parent companies, but he turned down the job for unspecified personal reasons before his scheduled May 26 start, the newspaper reported. Jim Berg has served as interim CEO since January.

DiLisi, a New Jersey native, has a medical degree from Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia and an MBA from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, the health system said.

“Dr. DiLisi recognizes the enormous responsibility of caring for people and keeping our community healthy because he’s lived it his entire life,” said Dr. Brian Cuddy, chair of the Roper St. Francis board.

Roper St. Francis has roughly 6,000 workers, according to the newspaper.