HHS hires former Wal-Mart exec Leslie Dach, and other moves

Leslie Dach, a former executive for Wal-Mart Stores, has joined HHS as senior counselor.

Dach, 60, will report to HHS Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell in the newly created role. He will assist with the health insurance exchanges' second open-enrollment period and work with HHS staff and nongovernmental agencies on strategic health policies.

He was Wal-Mart's executive VP of corporate affairs and government relations for seven years, and has 25 years combined experience in business, politics and strategic communications.

Texas Health Resources has promoted Barclay Berdan to succeed retiring longtime CEO Douglas Hawthorne.

Berdan, 61, who joined Harris Methodist Health System in 1986 as a VP and administrator, will assume the role on Sept. 1. Harris Methodist joined Presbyterian Healthcare Resources to form Arlington-based Texas Health Resources in 1997. Hawthorne, who announced in January he planned to step down, has been THR's CEO since its inception.

The system credits Berdan with building the organization into a North Texas market leader as president of Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital Fort Worth, and then in several system-level leadership roles before becoming COO in 2012.

CHE Trinity Health, Livonia, Mich., has named two executives to lead the system's regional divisions.

Rick O'Connell, 61, is now executive VP of CHE Trinity's East Group, overseeing hospital operations in some of the organization's largest markets. Sally Jeffcoat, 61, is executive VP of the West/Midwest Group.

O'Connell previously was executive VP of the West/Midwest Group. Jeffcoat most recently was CEO of St. Alphonsus Health System, a CHE Trinity system in Boise, Idaho, and within the group she now oversees.

CHE Trinity was formed last year through the merger of Catholic Health East and Trinity Health.

Dr. Henry Ting has been named senior VP and chief quality officer at New York-Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan, one of the largest hospitals in the country.

Ting, a cardiologist, directs New York-Presbyterian's clinical-quality and patient-safety initiatives. He previously was associate dean of the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, Rochester, Minn., and also directed the Mayo Clinic Quality Academy, which provides quality-improvement education to all Mayo clinicians.

Ting replaced Dr. Eliot Lazar, who died in January.

Cathy Kenworthy has been named president and CEO at Interactive Health, a Chicago-based provider of worksite wellness solutions for employers. She succeeds Joseph O'Brien, who has been named executive chairman.

Kenworthy, 48, joined Interactive in October 2013 as COO. She has more than 25 years of leadership experience in operations, strategic planning, product development, general management and data analytics. Before joining Interactive, she was head of customer engagement at Cardinal Health and had various executive roles at JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and GE Capital.