Cornell is AHLA's new president, and other newsmakers

Lois Dehls Cornell, chief administrative officer and general counsel at Tufts Health Plan, has begun her term as president of the American Health Lawyers Association.

Cornell will be responsible for launching the AHLA's fiscal 2017 strategic plan, with her own goals including an improvement in the organization's technology capabilities and additional work on the organization's diversity and inclusion efforts. At Tufts, Cornell is responsible for all legal matters, human resources, strategic initiatives and communications.

Before joining Tufts, Cornell was an associate at Goodwin Proctor in Boston.

Madlyn Murrey has been named senior VP and chief nursing officer at Seattle Children's Hospital. She replaces Susan Heath, who is retiring this year.

Murrey, 56,will begin her new role on Aug. 24, leaving her current job as VP and chief administrative officer of Randall Children's Hospital at Legacy Emanuel Medical Center in Portland, Ore.

Before joining Randall, Murrey was COO of Multicare Mary Bridge Children's Hospital in Tacoma, Wash., where she spent 19 years in various leadership roles.

Richard Topping has been named CEO of Cardinal Innovations Healthcare, a large specialty health plan based in Charlotte, N.C.

Topping, 38, joined the company in 2009 as executive VP and general counsel. He replaces retiring CEO Pam Shipman.

Before joining Cardinal Innovations, Topping was a trial attorney for the U.S. Justice Department in Washington, where he represented the HHS secretary. He also served as special assistant U.S. attorney for the Western District of Louisiana and the Eastern District of North Carolina.

PreferredOne, a Minnesota-based health insurance company that bowed out of the state's exchange, has named David Crosby CEO, effective Aug. 10.

Crosby, 53, previously was executive VP for commercial health plans at MVP Health Care, an insurer based in New York. Paul Geiwitz has been serving as PreferredOne's interim CEO since Marcus Merz retired at the end of 2014.

PreferredOne—half-owned by Fairview Health Services and part-owned by North Memorial Health Care and PreferredOne Physician Associates—was the most popular plan on Minnesota's state-run exchange in 2014. But underpriced premiums and higher-than-expected claims from policyholders piled up into large losses and forced PreferredOne to abandon the exchange for this year.

Group purchasing organization Amerinet has named two new senior executives: Jeremy Belinski is now executive VP and COO, and Jason Baumgartner is chief sales officer.

Salt Lake City-based Intermountain Healthcare recently acquired full ownership of the St. Louis-based GPO; it previously held 50%. Brent Johnson, formerly VP of supply chain and support services for Intermountain, took over as Amerinet CEO shortly thereafter.

Belinski comes to Amerinet after serving as senior VP and general manager of population health management at MedAssets, an Alpharetta, Ga.-based GPO and healthcare services company.

Baumgartner previously served as Intermountain's associate VP of business development and commercialization. Before that, he was VP of enterprise solutions for Charlotte, N.C.-based Premier.