Lynn Erdman named CEO of AWHONN, Gannotta to lead Northwestern Memorial and other moves

Lynn Erdman has been named CEO of the Association of Women's Health, Obstetric and Neonatal Nurses.

Effective Jan. 21, Erdman, 58, will lead the 24,000-member organization, which includes clinicians, educators and executives throughout the world. The group seeks to represent the interests of the 350,000 registered nurses working in the field.

Erdman, a nurse who has served in neonatal intensive care, women's health, labor and delivery, high-risk obstetrics, gynecological surgery, oncology and hospice care, brings more than three decades of experience in healthcare and not-for-profits.

Most recently, she served as head of the Commission on Cancer breast cancer accreditation programs, National Accreditation Program for Breast Centers and the national cancer database for the American College of Surgeons.

Northwestern Memorial HealthCare, Chicago, named Richard Gannotta to succeed Dean Harrison as president of Northwestern Memorial Hospital.

Harrison has served as president of Northwestern Memorial Hospital since 2002, and in 2006 was also named president and CEO of Northwestern Memorial HealthCare.

Gannotta, 52, president of the Duke University Health System's Duke Raleigh (N.C.) Hospital and a nurse practitioner, will assume the role of Northwestern Memorial Hospital president and senior VP for the system Feb. 10. In 2013, Gannotta was named president of Duke Raleigh Hospital, where he had been an executive since 2006 and successfully worked to expand primary and specialty care, a Northwestern Memorial news release said.

As the newly appointed president, Gannotta will play a role coordinating initiatives between the health system and the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.

Jonathan Nalli has been named CEO of Indianapolis-based St.Vincent Health, effective Feb. 1.

Nalli, 39, will oversee the subsystem of Ascension Health that includes several critical-access hospitals and a large multispecialty medical practice. The system's market is primarily central and southern Indiana.

Since 2007, Nalli has served as CEO of Valparaiso, Ind.-based Porter Health Care System, an affiliate of Community Health Systems. At Porter, he led two hospitals, six outpatient centers and a number of physician practices. Prior to Porter Health, Nalli was COO of Chestnut Hill Health System in Philadelphia for two years.

Bernard Tyson, CEO of Kaiser Permanente since July, is now also chairman of the board of directors of Kaiser Foundation Hospitals and Kaiser Foundation Health Plan.

Tyson, 54, began his new role as chairman Jan. 1. He has served Kaiser Permanente for nearly 30 years. His experience includes hospital administration and managing Kaiser's regional operations. Before stepping into the CEO position last year, succeeding George Halvorson, Tyson most recently served as Kaiser's president and COO.

McKesson Specialty Health and the US Oncology Network hired Jeffrey Kao as chief information officer and senior VP of information and technology services, effective Jan. 6.

Kao most recently was CIO and senior VP at Coventry Health Care, a Bethesda, Md.-based Medicaid managed-care company acquired last year by Aetna.

At McKesson Corp., a San Francisco-based pharmaceutical distributor and health IT company, Kao will oversee support technologies for practices in the US Oncology Network and others that receive support services from McKesson Specialty Health. He will be based in Woodlands, Texas, where those businesses are based.