Corewell Health President and CEO Tina Freese Decker has been selected to be the next chair of the American Hospital Association.
Freese Decker will be the top elected official of the organization, which represents more than 5,000 hospitals and 43,000 healthcare leaders in the U.S., in 2025. She will replace Joanne Conroy, president and CEO of Dartmouth Health in New Hampshire, in the role. Wright Lassiter III, former CEO of Henry Ford Health and current CEO of CommonSpirit Health in Chicago, served as the AHA's chair in 2022.
Freese Decker will serve as the chair-elect next year. She's also a member of the AHA's board of trustees.
"We have many challenges and many opportunities ahead of us," Freese Decker said in a press release. "The greatest opportunity is to showcase our innovation, grit and compassion to evolve and transform healthcare. I look forward to serving the AHA and its members in our pursuit of better health."
Freese Decker led the merger of Grand Rapids-based Spectrum Health, where she served as CEO, and Southfield-based Beaumont Health, which merged last year and was renamed Corewell Health.
The merger created the state's largest health system with 22 hospitals, 60,000 employees with a revenue of $13.8 billion in 2022. She became the merged entity's president and CEO immediately. The health system also includes the 1.3 million-member health plan Priority Health, the third-largest provider-integrated health plan in the country.
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Prior to her promotion to president and CEO of Spectrum in 2018, Freese Decker helped streamline operations at Spectrum after several acquisitions as its COO and developed its outpatient strategy. For nearly two decades, Freese Decker has played an integral role in helping Spectrum quietly build a west side healthcare empire.
She was named a Crain's Newsmaker in 2021 and 2022 and has been honored as part of Crain's Most Influential Women list.
She also currently serves on the boards of The Right Place, Business Leaders for Michigan and the Michigan Health & Hospital Association.
She earned a bachelor's from Iowa State University and two master's from the University of Iowa.
This story first appeared in Crain's Detroit Business.
