HCA's Perlin named chair-elect designate of AHA Board of Trustees

Dr. Jonathan Perlin, chief medical officer and president of clinical and physician services at Nashville-based HCA, was elected chair-elect designate of the American Hospital Association Board of Trustees during the AHA Health Forum and Leadership Summit in San Diego. He will take over as chairman in 2015.

Earlier this year, another HCA official, Senior Vice President Victor Campbell, took over as chairman of the board for the association that represents for-profit hospitals, the Federation of American Hospitals. Jim Hinton, president and CEO of Albuquerque-based Presbyterian Healthcare Services, is in line to succeed Kaiser Permanente Executive Vice President Dr. Benjamin Chu as the AHA's board chair next year.

The AHA is an umbrella group for all hospitals, including not-for-profit, for-profit investor owned, children's and teaching institutions. Perlin will be the first board chairman from a for-profit system, according to the AHA.

Perlin, 52, started at HCA in 2006, and has led the for-profit healthcare giant's efforts in advancing perinatal safety and infection prevention, according to an AHA news release (PDF). He was a co-author of an HCA study on preventing intensive care-unit patients from infection by methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, that was published in the New England Journal of Medicine last month.

Previously, Perlin was undersecretary for health at the U.S. Veterans Affairs Department, where he was an early advocate of electronic health records and quality improvement. He chairs the HHS Health IT Standards Committee, and he also serves on the boards of the National Patient Safety Foundation and the Meharry Medical College in Nashville.

Perlin has made the Modern Healthcare/Modern Physician 50 Most Influential Physician Executives in Healthcare list seven times and was No. 30 on the list this year. His highest placement was No. 7 in 2009.

Follow Andis Robeznieks on Twitter: @MHARobeznieks