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Last year, Anthony Armada was named president of Advocate Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge, Ill., a 579-bed teaching hospital and pediatric-care center. He joined Advocate Lutheran from Henry Ford Hospital and Health Network in Detroit, where he served as president and CEO for five years. Armada, 50, has also held executive roles with Kaiser Permanente in Los Angeles, Northridge (Calif.) Hospital Medical Center and Columbia Chino Valley Medical Center in Chino, Calif. He is board chairman of the Institute for Diversity in Health Management.
Regina Benjamin is the 18th surgeon general of the United States. A family medicine physician, Benjamin, 53, has dedicated her career to helping the underserved access healthcare. She is the founder and former CEO of the Bayou La Batre (Ala.) Rural Health Clinic and former associate dean for rural health at the University of South Alabama College of Medicine in Mobile. In 2002, she was named president of the Medical Association of the State of Alabama, becoming the first black woman to lead a state medical society. President Barack Obama chose Benjamin as his surgeon general in July 2009.
Paula Autry is president of Mount Carmel East hospital in Columbus, Ohio. In this position since 2007, Autry, 47, has overseen responsibility for operations, planning and finances for the 399-bed hospital, with $1 billion in annual revenue. She previously was executive vice president and administrator of Bon Secours Richmond (Va.) Community Hospital and senior vice president of Erlanger Health System in Chattanooga, Tenn. Autry serves on the board of governors of the American College of Healthcare Executives.
For the past decade, John Bluford has been at the helm of Truman Medical Centers in Kansas City, Mo., a two-hospital system. During his time as president and CEO of the not-for-profit system, Truman has more than doubled revenue, from $197 million to $423 million annually. In recent years, the system has invested $120 million in capital and technology improvements. Prior to joining Truman Medical Centers, Bluford, 60, spent 21 years at Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis, with the last six years as CEO.
In 2005, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg appointed Alan Aviles as president and CEO of the New York City Health and Hospitals Corp., the largest municipal hospital system in the country, with 11 acute-care facilities. Since then, Aviles, 55, has overseen a $1.3 billion capital-improvement project, the implementation of a electronic health-record system and a patient-safety program to reduce medical errors and infections. The patient-safety program has prevented more than 1,000 infections and saved nearly $16 million over the past three years, according to Aviles. A native of the Bronx, Aviles was previously the system's general counsel and senior vice president.
One of the top leaders in Catholic health services, Ruth Brinkley is the president and CEO of Carondelet Health Network in Tucson, Ariz., and the West Ministry market leader for parent system Ascension Health. Since 2007, Brinkley, 58, has led the four-hospital system and been responsible for the operational performance of the health ministries she oversees. Prior to joining Ascension, she was president and CEO of Memorial Health Care System in Chattanooga, Tenn., a Catholic Health Initiatives facility. Educated as a nurse, Brinkley said she was drawn to Catholic healthcare, though she is not herself Catholic. “It integrates the body, mind and spirit in such an effective way,” she says.
For the past year, Denise Brooks-Williams has served as president and CEO of Battle Creek (Mich.) Health System, a 211-bed provider jointly owned by Trinity Health and BCHS Community Partners. Although she is only 42 years old, Brooks-Williams has held positions in the healthcare sector for the past 20 years, starting at Mercy Hospital in Detroit. She went on to spend five years at Detroit Medical Center, where she managed construction of eight new facilities and led implementation of a $200,000 Medicaid eligibility grant. She held leadership positions at St. Joseph Mercy Oakland in Pontiac, Mich., before joining Battle Creek Health System.
After a long and distinguished career in the U.S. Army, George Brown is taking on new challenges as president and CEO of Legacy Health System in Portland, Ore. Since 2008, Brown, 62, has led the five-hospital system serving greater Portland and southwest Washington state. Prior to joining Legacy Health, Brown was chief operating officer at MultiCare Health System in Tacoma, Wash. A gastroenterologist, Brown rose through the ranks of the Army to become a brigadier general. His posts included commanding general at Madigan Army Medical Center at Fort Lewis, Wash., and commander of Walter Reed Health Care System in Washington.
Richard Cordova is president and CEO of 286-bed Childrens Hospital Los Angeles, a position he has held since 2005. Cordova, 60, was president of the Southern California region of the Kaiser Foundation Health Plan and Kaiser Foundation Hospitals, with responsibility for 11 hospitals and a 3 million-member health plan, from 2002 to 2004. He joined Kaiser Permanente in 1999 as chief operating officer for Southern California in 1999. He was the CEO of San Francisco General Hospital from 1991 to 1997.
Lloyd Dean is president and CEO of Catholic Healthcare West, a 38-hospital system based in San Francisco. One of the most influential executives in healthcare today, Dean, 59, has been widely recognized for his turnaround strategy for CHW, launched in 2001 when he took the helm of the organization. Today, he oversees a not-for-profit faith based system with $11 billion in assets, 53,000 employees and 10,000 physicians in Arizona, California and Nevada. Raised in Muskegon, Mich., Dean was previously executive vice president and chief operating officer of Advocate Health Care in Oak Brook, Ill.
Since 2004, Paul Diaz has served as president and CEO of Kindred Healthcare. Based in Louisville, Ky., Kindred operates 83 long-term-care facilities and 222 nursing and rehabilitation centers across the country, with more than $4 billion in annual revenue. Trained as an attorney and an accountant, Diaz, 48, was previously chief operating officer at Mariner Health Group. Diaz was on Modern Healthcare's list of the 25 Top Minority Executives in Healthcare in 2008, and has also been featured multiple times in the magazine's 100 Most Powerful People in Healthcare ranking.
Garth Graham is the deputy assistant secretary for minority health at HHS, where he leads the federal government's efforts to reduce health disparities. In this role, he is implementing the first national plan to attack such disparities through private-public partnerships. Born in Kingston, Jamaica, Graham, 35, is a board-certified internal medicine physician. He serves as chairman of the public-private National Health IT Collaborative for the Underserved and holds a faculty position at Harvard Medical School.
Herman Gray, 59, is president of Children's Hospital of Michigan, Detroit, and a longtime healthcare leader in the greater Detroit community. A pediatrician, Gray has worked for the past decade to establish the hospital as a leader in pediatric care, expanding services to surrounding communities and launching programs to improve family-centered care. He held prior executive positions at Detroit Medical Center and the Blue Care Network of Michigan, an HMO. In 2009, he was named to the Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission, a federal advisory panel.
With a background in law, George Hernandez Jr. now runs one of the largest public hospitals in Texas. Hernandez, 58, has served since 2004 as president and CEO of University Health System in San Antonio. The academic 377-bed hospital is in the midst of a $900 million capital improvement project. Hernandez was instrumental in developing CareLink, a membership program for the county's uninsured to access primary and specialty care. Hernandez was previously director of the civil section of the district attorney's office for Bexar County, Texas, and vice president and general counsel for the county hospital district.
Henry “Hank” Hernandez started his career as a staff nurse in the Army, and is now CEO of 261-bed Las Palmas Medical Center in El Paso, Texas, an HCA facility. Las Palmas has expanded since he took the helm in 1998, adding a $40 million emergency room and intensive-care unit, and operating the only kidney transplant center in the area. Hernandez, 57, retired from the Army in 1994. He is a past chairman of the National Forum of Latino Healthcare Executives.
Until his resignation in February, Cleve Killingsworth was president and CEO of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Massachusetts, a position he held since 2005. Killingsworth, 57, led the state's largest health plan and drove significant changes to provider payments, including introducing the alternative quality contract, which rewards providers based on outcomes instead of volume. He was previously president and CEO of Health Alliance Plan in Detroit, one of Michigan's largest managed-care companies, and senior vice president of insurance and managed care for the Henry Ford Health System in Detroit. From 1994 to 1998, he led the Central East Division for Kaiser Permanente.
Howard Koh is the assistant secretary for health at HHS. In this role, Koh, 58, oversees the Office of Public Health and Science, the Commissioned Corps of the U.S. Public Health Service and the Office of the Surgeon General. He is also senior public health adviser to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. Koh was previously a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, where he worked on cancer disparities, tobacco control and emergency preparedness. From 1997 to 2003 he was commissioner of public health for Massachusetts. He is board-certified in internal medicine, hematology, medical oncology and dermatology.
Johnny Kuo is chief operating officer of Gracie Square Hospital in New York. In this role, he also serves as patient-safety officer for the 157-bed facility dedicated to patients with mental illnesses and other chronic health conditions. Kuo, 48, has served in this role since 2000, aside from a nine-month stint in 2008 and 2009 as director of quality management at Archcare, a geriatric-care system of the Archdiocese of New York. Kuo is board-certified in infection control and has worked to improve the quality of care for patients in an inpatient setting.
Kevin Lofton is president and CEO of Catholic Health Initiatives, one of the nation's largest health systems. Lofton, 55, joined Denver-based CHI in 1998, and took the helm of the faith-based organization in 2003. He oversees more than 70 hospitals and 44 long-term-care facilities, with operating revenue of nearly $9.6 billion annually. Lofton has held executive healthcare positions for the past 30 years, including at UAB Hospital in Birmingham and Howard University Hospital in Washington. He has been named multiple times to Modern Healthcare's list of the 100 Most Powerful People in Healthcare.
Michael Rashid is president and CEO of AmeriHealth Mercy, a Medicaid managed-care health plan in Philadelphia serving nearly 7 million people. Rashid, 62, joined AmeriHealth Mercy in 1996, and served as executive vice president until he took the helm of the health plan in January 2010. His 25-year career in health plan operations includes stints as president and CEO of Mercy Health Plan of New Jersey and director of operations at Prudential Health Care Plan in Baltimore.
Prem Reddy, 61, is the founder and chairman of Prime Healthcare Services, a 13-hospital system based in Victorville, Calif. He developed the Desert Valley Medical Group, a multispecialty practice, in 1985, that later became PrimeCare International, which he sold to PhyCor in 1998. Reddy, was born in a village in India and immigrated to the United States with his wife in 1976, and completed his medical residency at the SUNY Downstate Medical Center, New York. He is board-certified in internal medicine and cardiology.
Yvette Roubideaux is director of the Indian Health Service, a division of HHS and the principal healthcare provider for about 1.9 million of the 3.3 million American Indians and Alaska natives in the U.S. Roubideaux, 47, a member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe of South Dakota, was sworn in for the post in May 2009. She oversees a $4 billion healthcare delivery program with 12 regional offices. A primary-care physician, Roubideaux previously was clinical director and medical officer at the San Carlos Service Unit on the San Carlos Apache Indian reservation in Arizona. She was also assistant professor of community and family medicine at the University of Arizona College of Medicine, and has conducted research on health conditions that affect American Indians, including diabetes research.
As executive vice president for health plan and hospital operations for Kaiser Permanente, Bernard Tyson leads a team of presidents who run the managed-care giant's eight regions. Tyson, 51, is also accountable of all aspects of patient care, and is the senior executive for Kaiser's 29 hospitals, 400 medical office buildings and a workforce of 150,000 employees. He has overseen the opening of 14 hospitals and 55 medical office buildings as part of Kaiser Permanente's nine-year, $27 billion capital spending plan. He first joined the Oakland, Calif.-based integrated health system in 1981 as an administrative analyst. “Through Tyson's vision, Kaiser Permanente is redefining the way care is performed at the bedside,” says Kaiser Chairman and CEO George Halvorson.
Reed Tuckson is executive vice president and chief of medical affairs at UnitedHealth Group, the largest health insurer by revenue in the nation. An internal medicine physician, Tuckson, 59, works with all the business units at the Minnetonka, Minn.-based insurer to improve quality and efficiency of health services. He was senior vice president of professional standards for the American Medical Association and former president of the Charles Drew University of Medicine and Science in Los Angeles. He chaired the Institute of Medicine's Crossing the Quality Chasm Summit Committee.
Donald Wesson is chief academic officer for Scott & White Healthcare in Temple, Texas, and vice dean of Texas A&M University College of Medicine at Temple. Scott & White is an integrated health system and the largest multispecialty practice in Texas. Wesson, 56, is board-certified in internal medicine and nephrology. He is a member of the National Institutes of Health's external advisory committee of the African-American study of kidney disease and hypertension. He was previously the S.C. Arnett professor of medicine and chairman of the department of internal medicine at Texas Tech University Health Science Center in Lubbock from 1999 to 2006. He started teaching medicine in 1982 and has authored or co-authored more than 50 peer-reviewed articles.
