University of Wisconsin Hospital CEO retiring Sept. 1, and other news makers

Donna Katen-Bahensky is retiring as CEO of University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics, Madison, effective Sept. 1.

Katen-Bahensky has led UW Hospital and Clinics since 2008. Before then, she was CEO of University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, Iowa City, and COO of Virginia Commonwealth University Health System, Richmond.

Ron Sliwinski will serve as interim CEO. Sliwinski has been with the academic medical center since 2009, most recently serving as COO. Eventually, the CEO position for UW Hospital and Clinics will be eliminated as UW Health restructures its hospital and physician divisions.

Dr. Herbert Cushing has been named chief medical officer at Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia.

Previously, he was CMO of Indiana University Health University Hospital in Indianapolis and associate dean of student affairs at the IU School of Medicine. He also was medical director for IU Health Physicians, one of the largest physician groups in Indiana.

Cushing, 57, is board certified in internal medicine and infectious diseases.

Dr. Keith Wilson has been named chief medical officer at managed-care company Molina Healthcare.

Wilson, 58, an obstetrician and gynecologist, started his new role of this month. He has been with Long Beach, Calif.-based Molina since March 2013, serving as VP of clinical services for Molina's medical clinics and American Family Care, a subsidiary of the company.

Before joining Molina, Wilson was a regional medical director with Torrance, Calif.-based HealthCare Partners. He also was CEO of Talbert Medical Group, Fountain Valley, Calif., which he helped merge with HealthCare Partners in 2010.

Troy Caraway has been named senior VP of UnityPoint Health's insurance division and CEO of Physicians Plus Insurance Corp.

Caraway, 44, previously spent 14 years at Optum, part of health insurer UnitedHealth Group, most recently serving as senior VP for member acquisition and retention.

UnityPoint, based in West Des Moines, Iowa, acquired PPIC last year. The insurer was part of Meriter Health Services in Madison, Wis., which officially joined UnityPoint in January.

Dr. Joel Nobel, who founded the not-for-profit ECRI Institute in 1968 to address safety, quality and costs issues in healthcare, died this month at age 79. The neurosurgeon, inventor and researcher was known for establishing programs to evaluate the safety of medical equipment.

“His mission in life was to make healthcare safer for patients,” said Anthony Montagnolo, ECRI Institute's COO. “He was dedicated to finding what was wrong, and not resting until it was changed.”

Nobel gained attention in 1966 when his design of a medical emergency crash cart was featured in Life magazine. The life-support cart essentially carried all the instruments and medical supplies physicians needed for cardiopulmonary resuscitation. He also developed other patient-safety protocols and contributed to the development of a universal medical-device classification system.