It’s rare that the American College of Healthcare Executives awards two gold medals in one year, and if the second is awarded it goes to someone who has made major contributions to healthcare administration without being primarily a healthcare administrator.
Wayne Sorensen’s 22-page curriculum vitae is a testament to a professional life spent developing the best in education and training for healthcare administrators as a professor at Baylor University, Southwest Texas State University and Texas State University at San Marcos. In addition, the 65-year-old Sorensen has acted as a consultant to clients as diverse as the Texas Hospital Association, the commander-in-chief of the U.S. Army in Europe, and King Fahd of Saudi Arabia (advising on the operational design for the King Abdulaziz Medical City in Jeddah).
“Wayne was a real leader at Texas State, and he put that program on the map,” says Thomas Dolan, president and chief executive officer of the ACHE. Sorensen has advised plenty of other programs as well, including those at Trinity, Webster and Johns Hopkins universities.
Sorensen began his healthcare career in the Army, first working in, and then running, various military healthcare facilities. After earning a Master of Health Administration at the University of Iowa and a doctorate at Baylor, he was the director of a joint MHA program between the Army and Baylor. He chaired the department of health administration at Southwest Texas University for a decade, and continues to teach at the school, now renamed Texas State. He has developed more than two dozen courses in health administration.
