SHARON H. FITZGERALD

There’s no mistaking that Tennessee ranks high in the world of healthcare, and Modern Healthcare magazine recently added to the state’s acclaim by including four healthcare power players from the state on its “100 Most Powerful People in Healthcare” list.

Appearing in the prestigious ranking are Nashville’s Jack Bovender, HCA chairman and CEO, at No. 14; Kingsport’s Richard Salluzzo, president and CEO of Wellmont Health System, at No. 48; Franklin’s Wayne Smith, chairman, president and CEO of Community Health Systems, at No. 52; and Nashville’s Harry Jacobson, vice chancellor of health affairs for Vanderbilt University Medical Center, at No. 97. Former U.S. Sen. Bill Frist, who was No. 3 in 2006, fell off the list for the first since its inception in 2002.

Here’s how Modern Healthcare determined the list: From April 9 through May 11, readers nominated candidates via the magazine’s website, and the readers were very busy, shattering participation numbers from previous years. They submitted more than 12,600 nominations, up nearly 40 percent from last year. Then the magazine placed the 300 people who received the most nominations on a final ballot, also posted on the website. From May 28 through June 29, readers visited the site to vote for the 10 candidates they believed should make the final list of the 100 Most Powerful. Readers submitted nearly 26,500 ballots with a total of just under 265,000 votes cast, up 45 percent from last year. The 100 people who received the most votes made the final list with the ranking determined by number of votes received.



Jack Bovender

Bovender, a mainstay in Nashville’s medical circles, joined HCA as an associate hospital administrator in 1975. In 1992, he landed the job of executive vice president and chief operating officer. Yet Bovender retired in 1994 after HCA’s merger with Columbia Hospital Corp. He earned the giant “S” on his chest when he returned to the company in August 1997 after the tumultuous Columbia/HCA years. Today, HCA is a thriving business model of for-profit healthcare, thanks in no small measure to Bovender, who directed the company’s move to private status last year. The $33 billion buyout was unprecedented. Bovender is instrumental in a Federation of American Hospital initiative to help provide some coverage for more uninsured Americans.



Dr. Richard Salluzzo

Board-certified in both internal and emergency medicine, Salluzzo has headed Wellmont since 2004 and orchestrated the health system’s dramatic financial turnaround. Yet Salluzzo’s passion isn’t numbers–unless it’s the number of lives being saved. He’s a leader on the issue of patient safety and founder of the national Safest Hospital Alliance, comprised of Wellmont, Adventist Health System and Novant Health. The idea is a patient-safety model that would eventually be an industry template. Salluzzo serves on the board of directors for the Tennessee Hospital Association and the Hospital Alliance of Tennessee and is a member of the advisory council for the Tennessee Center for Patient Safety. Earlier this year, Modern Healthcare named Salluzzo the nation’s sixth-most-powerful physician executive.



Wayne Smith

Smith hit Community Health Systems in 1997, and the company has grown in the ensuing decade from $742 million in net revenue to more than $4 billion. Needless to say, Smith has made Modern Healthcare’s most-powerful list before. Smith brought to CHS 23 years of experience with Humana, where he eventually became president and CEO before moving on. Smith is making national–no, international–headlines as he oversees CHS’s purchase of Texas-based Triad, which was actually an HCA spinoff way back when. The two companies sealed the deal in July. Smith was also Business TN magazine’s CEO of the year in October.

Smith spent four years as a captain in the U.S. Army Medical Services Corps.



Harry Jacobson

Lording over an annual budget of about $51.1 billion, Jacobson is a CEO, although his title doesn’t reflect that. Now in his 10th year at the helm of Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Jacobson is board-certified in both internal medicine and nephrology and a strong advocate for healthcare improvement by way of information technology. Jacobson is about to embark on a peerless expansion of VUMC on the site of 100 Oaks Mall, as well as construction of a fifth medical research building. He possesses a healthy corporate memory, having joined the Vanderbilt Medical School faculty in 1981 as professor of medicine and director of the Division of Nephrology.




November 2007