The head of a critical access hospital in Randolph, Vt., has been named the new president and chief executive officer of the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital.

Joseph (Joe) Woodin has 25 years of experience in the field of hospital administration and comes from Gifford Medical Center, where he has been president and CEO since 2000. Gifford is a 25-bed critical access hospital with nine locations in central Vermont. The facility also operates a 30-bed skilled nursing facility. The Vineyard hospital is also a critical access hospital, a special federal designation for certain rural hospitals throughout the country.

Vineyard hospital trustees announced the appointment in a press release last Saturday.

Mr. Woodin has a master’s degree in science in administration from Saint Michael’s College in Colchester, Vt., and earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

He also formerly held key positions at Fletcher Allen Health Care, formerly the Medical Center Hospital of Vermont. He will take the job at the Island’s only hospital in mid-May when president and chief executive officer Timothy Walsh retires.

In a news release on the Gifford hospital site last week, Mr. Woodin said he was leaving the hospital after 17 years for personal reasons.

“In the last three years I lost my wife, and then my mother, and it has been a time of personal reflection for me,” he said. “It’s the right time for me to move forward in life and pursue another opportunity.”

Reached by telephone this week, he reiterated the personal theme. “In life a lot of the things we do are structured and planned and we think through them . . . . and sometimes things happen in life that are dramatically different,” he said. “For me it was the loss of my wife and high school sweetheart that was sort of the calling that I could have easily ignored. But I decided I should probably have the courage.”

Originally from Framingham, Mr. Woodin is 55 and has three grown children and one grandchild.

Trained as an industrial engineer, he began work in business and manufacturing but early on in his career moved into hospital administration in Vermont, spurred initially by his work in a homeless shelter in Burlington, Vt. He described a broad common denominator between Gifford and the Vineyard hospital, and said he looks forward to the challenge of the new work. He chuckled when recalling being asked questions about whether he would be okay during the long Vineyard winters. “I said, have you pulled out a map to see where I live? I think I’m probably going to really enjoy those other eight months. And I love small towns.”

He also loves rural hospitals and the complicated factors that make them tick. “The similarities between Vineyard and Gifford are pretty striking,” he said. “We went through a very dark time that culminated in 1999 with a negative 16 per cent operating margin . . . . [since then] we have worked very hard to take this financial piece and manage that well, put it to the side so it’s no longer a filter. Me coming to the Vineyard is interesting — it’s sort of like taking the baton from someone who did what I did . . . . and I know how important it is to remember that history as you move forward with the vision and mission of the organization,” he said, referring to Tim Walsh’s work steering the Island hospital onto solid financial ground.

Mr. Woodin had high praise for Mr. Walsh. “He’s done a fantastic job,” he said.

The appointment of Mr. Woodin follows a months-long search that began last fall when Mr. Walsh announced he would step down after 15 years on the job, 12 of them as president and CEO.

The hospital used St. Louis, Mo. consulting firm Grant Cooper to conduct the search. Grant Cooper specializes in searches for health care executives.

Hospital board chairman Timothy Sweet, who also led the search committee, said this week that while there were several strong finalists, Mr. Woodin almost immediately rose to the top. “He quite frankly seemed to be custom made for exactly what we were looking for,” Mr. Sweet said. “What struck us about Joe was he is very steady — he almost got into this by accident, he is an engineer by education and training. Now he has been working in the same place for almost 17 years, in a critical access hospital that he has taken from serious financial stress to a thriving facility. And he was becoming available more because of personal reasons than a career change. As we talked, more and more it just seemed liked the perfect moment for him and the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital.” Formerly independent, the hospital has been under the wing of Partners Health Care in Boston as an affiliate of Massachusetts General Hospital since 2007. A 15-member Island-based board of trustees presides over hospital affairs. The hospital, which completed a $50 million new building in 2010, offers a full range of services, including emergency room, laboratory and radiology, maternity, operating room, acute care, primary care and some specialists. A plan is in place to open a primary care walk-in clinic sometime this spring. The hospital also owns and operates the Windemere Nursing and Rehabilitation Facility on its campus in Oak Bluffs. Mr. Sweet declined to discuss Mr. Woodin’s compensation package, although he confirmed that Mr. Walsh’s total annual compensation is in the range of about $500,000. The Valley News reported this week that Mr. Woodin’s total compensation at Gifford was $477,000 in 2013. Salaries for top-paid employees are required to be reported on tax returns for 501(c)3 nonprofits.

Mr. Sweet said Mr. Woodin comes to the Island during a time of profound change in the health care world, as hospitals work to control costs and meet demands for more transparency and patient accountability.

“I think Joe has a real ability, he has worked very well with the community in Vermont; he is hoping to do that here too,” he said.