Nancy Hoyt named board chair of Compassion & Choices, and other newsmakers

Nancy Hoyt has been named board chair of Compassion & Choices, one of the nation's largest not-for-profit organizations devoted to end-of-life care options.

Hoyt, 60, has been a board member since October 2012. She replaces Irene Wurtzel, who remains on the organization's board. Hoyt is a retired psychologist. Most of her experience has been with at-risk adolescents who live in inner-city Chicago.

Denver-based Compassion & Choices is working to bring aid-in-dying laws to California, Colorado, Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Jersey. Such laws, which allow doctors to help end a patient's life, are already on the books in Montana, New Mexico, Oregon, Vermont and Washington.

Jeff Sherman has been named CFO at HMS Holdings Corp., a major player in Medicare's auditing space.

Sherman, 48, previously was CFO of LifePoint Hospitals, a large for-profit hospital chain, for more than four years. He resigned from LifePoint in August 2013 to become CFO of AccentCare, a private-equity backed company that provides post-acute healthcare services.

Sherman now oversees financial operations of publicly traded HMS, the parent company of HealthDataInsights. HDI is the CMS' recovery auditor contractor for 17 states.

HHS Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell has named her chief of staff, Andrea Palm, as a senior counselor—the third such appointee since July.

Palm, 41, who has been HHS' chief of staff since 2013, will keep that role in addition to serving as a senior counselor. As a senior counselor, she will work on “key strategic initiatives” within HHS.

She has been with HHS since President Barack Obama took office. She has worked on the implementation of the healthcare reform law and public health issues, such as compounding pharmacies and the H1N1 pandemic.

Rhonda Anderson has been named CFO at St. Louis-based Ascension Health, the nation's largest not-for-profit health system, effective Oct. 13.

Anderson, 55, serves as CFO of Columbia St. Mary's, an Ascension affiliate based in Milwaukee. She has been with Columbia St. Mary's since 2009 and also has 20 years of executive experience at St. Agnes Hospital in Baltimore.

Anderson will replace Katherine Arbuckle, who is retiring.

Anthony Speranzo still serves as CFO of parent organization Ascension. Anderson will oversee the financial operations of Ascension's largest subsidiary and work closely with Speranzo and his finance team.

Edward Chadwick has been named CFO of Henry Ford Health System, Detroit, which has recently struggled with its finances and faces fierce competition from a newly merged system.

Chadwick, 55, most recently served as CFO of Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, an academic health system based in Winston-Salem, N.C., that has faced several fiscal obstacles of its own. During Chadwick's tenure, Wake Forest Baptist slogged through a costly electronic health-record project that led, in part, to a credit-rating downgrade.

Henry Ford faces new competition from a new area mega-system, Beaumont Health, which this month finalized its three-system merger.