J. Michael Cowling has been named CEO at the 199-bed Palm Beach Gardens Medical Center. Cowling most recently served as division vice president with Health Management Associates, a Naples, FL-based operator of acute care hospitals. Opened in 1968, Palm Beach Gardens Medical Center is owned by a subsidiary of Dallas-based Tenet Healthcare Corp.
The Cottage Hospital Board of Trustees has appointed Maria Ryan as the new CEO of Cottage Hospital, a 25-bed, critical access hospital in Woodsville, NH. The transition of this office is expected to be completed in late January. Ryan is has served a dual role as Cottage Hospital's CNO/COO for the past three years. She succeeds Reg Lavoie, the current CEO.
Secours Health System and the Bon Secours St. Francis Health System have appointed Mark Nantz as its new CEO for Bon Secours St. Francis Health System in Greenville, SC. Nantz will assume his new responsibilities at St. Francis Feb. 1. Nantz comes to St. Francis from Carolinas HealthCare System, where he is currently president of Carolinas Medical Center-NorthEast in Concord, NC.
WellCare Health Plans, Inc. has announced that Alec R. Cunningham, 42, has been elected CEO effective today. Cunningham, who is currently president of WellCare's Florida and Hawaii division, will succeed current President/CEO Heath Schiesser, who, as previously announced, will leave the company at the end of this year.
Julie Quirin, CEO of Saint Luke's Hospital in Kansas City, will lead the American Hospital Association's Section for Metropolitan Hospitals as chair of its 24-member governing council for 2010. The Section is a forum for suburban and urban hospitals to discuss common interests and concerns and to participate in the AHA policy process. Mark Gavens, senior vice president, Clinical Care Services/COO for Cedars Sinai in Los Angeles is this year's chair-elect. Brian A. Gragnolati, president/CEO of Suburban Hospital Healthcare System in Bethesda, MD, is immediate past chair. The Metropolitan governing council advises the AHA on federal policy issues.
Six years after Congress added a prescription drug benefit to Medicare, Democrats in the House and Senate are poised to make a change that would get rid of a gap that forces millions of elderly patients with especially high expenses for medicine to pay for much of it on their own, the Washington Post reports. The closing of the unusual gap in Medicare drug coverage would "forever end this indefensible injustice for American's seniors," Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-NV) said in announcing that the Senate would join the House in supporting the change.