AHA elects eight new trustees to the board

The American Hospital Association has elected eight new members to its board of trustees.

The incoming members include prominent healthcare leaders David Entwistle, president and CEO of Stanford (Calif.) Health Care; M. Michelle Hood, president and CEO of Eastern Maine Healthcare Systems in Brewer, Maine; and Wright Lassiter, president of Henry Ford Health System in Detroit.

Hood and Lassiter have been elected to serve a three-year term, effective Jan. 1. Entwistle was elected to a one-year term to fill a vacancy.

The board of trustees is the highest policy-making body of the AHA and manages the association's direction and finances, according to the association.

Entwistle is an active AHA member who currently serves as the association's liaison to the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education. He also has served on the AHA Regional Policy Board.

He's led Stanford Health Care since July 5. He was at the helm of the University of Utah Health Care, an academic medical center with four hospitals. He also held executive leadership roles at UW Hospital and Clinics and City of Hope National Medical Center in Duarte, Calif.

Hood, president and CEO of Eastern Maine Healthcare Systems, is past chair of the AHA Section for Health Care Systems, which helps shape public policy and services for hospitals and health systems, and a former AHA Regional Policy Board member.

She currently serves on the University of Maine System board as the immediate past chair. Hood also served as the chair of the Maine Hospital Association from 2013 to 2014 and remains on the board.

Hood has been at the helm of the EMHS since 2006. The system operates nine hospitals, eight nursing homes and home and hospice care.

Lassiter at Henry Ford Health System is a member of the AHA Board Task Force on Ensuring Access to Care in Vulnerable Communities. He is also past chair of the governing council of the AHA Section for Metropolitan Hospitals, which discusses important issues for urban hospitals. He has previously served on the boards of the California Hospital Association and America's Essential Hospitals.

Lassiter joined Henry Ford in 2014. He was previously CEO of Alameda Health System in Oakland, Calif.

Other new members to the AHA board of trustees are Vanessa Ervin, past chair and board member of the Onslow Memorial Hospital Authority in Jacksonville, N.C.; Dr. Rodney Hochman, president and CEO of Providence St. Joseph Health; David Molmen, CEO of Altru Health System in Grand Forks, N.D.; Jason Spring, chief executive for Provider Network Integration at Kalispell (Mont.) Regional Healthcare; Dr. Allen Weiss, president and CEO of NCH Healthcare System in Naples, Fla., and Joe Wilkins, vice chair of St. Joseph Hoag Health in Irvine, Calif.