CommonSpirit Health appoints Terika Richardson as Senior Executive VP and COO
CommonSpirit Health has selected Terika Richardson as Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, effective December 11, 2023. Richardson will serve as a member of the organization’s Executive Leadership Team and report to CEO Wright Lassiter III.
Richardson joins CommonSpirit with extensive executive operations experience and a rare blend of nonprofit and for profit as well as faith-based health care. As the organization’s Chief Operating Officer, she will provide both strategic and operations-related leadership, ensuring optimal operating effectiveness for the organization and its operating regions. Richardson will help drive opportunities to innovate the system and lead the organization’s efforts to achieve its growth targets related to revenue and market share, identify opportunities for growth in operating regions, support regional executives and local leaders in pursuit of their goals and objectives, and help identify and implement physician alignment strategies to reach quality and patient safety goals.
“Terika’s experience in optimizing care delivery systems and commitment to innovation make her a valuable addition to the CommonSpirit Health Executive Leadership Team and to our organization,” said CommonSpirit Health CEO Wright Lassiter III. “I look forward to working shoulder-to-shoulder with Terika to ensure that the care we provide our communities meets their needs today, tomorrow and for years to come.”
Prior to joining CommonSpirit, Richardson served as the Chief Operating Officer at Ardent Health Services in Tennessee, providing operational oversight of the system’s 30 hospitals and 200 care sites. While there, she realigned the service portfolio to better meet the needs of the communities the system served as well as the system’s overarching business priorities. Richardson also served as the president of Advocate Health Care’s Chicagoland market as well as the president of two of the health system’s hospitals, Lutheran General and Trinity/South Suburban. She also spent 14 years with HCA holding various leadership positions.
“CommonSpirit Health provides exceptional care in communities across this country, all with unique needs,” said Richardson. “I look forward to collaborating with my colleagues and teammates to make our care even more relevant to the needs of our communities and in ensuring that we are fully optimizing all of our systems and resources to deliver expert, quality care every day.”
HCA Healthcare collects 13,136 Pounds of medication during fifth annual “Crush the Crisis”
HCA Healthcare, Inc. announced that it collected 13,136 pounds of unused or expired medications during its fifth annual “Crush the Crisis” prescription drug take back day on October 28, 2023. HCA Healthcare has now collected more than 67,500 pounds of medication since launching “Crush the Crisis” as an enterprise initiative in 2019.
This year, all 15 HCA Healthcare U.S. divisions participated alongside local law enforcement in a “Crush the Crisis” prescription drug take back day to raise awareness about the dangers of prescription drug misuse and the importance of proper disposal of unused or expired medications. An estimated 9 million doses of medication were collected at 132 collection sites across 15 states. HCA Healthcare’s “Crush the Crisis” events were held in alignment with the Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA) National Prescription Drug Take Back Day, which collected 599,897 pounds of medication.
HCA Healthcare facility events with the greatest amount of medication collected this year include:
- The Medical Center of Aurora in Aurora, Colorado collected 670 pounds
- Centennial Hospital in Centennial, Colorado collected 602 pounds
- CJW Medical Center in Richmond, Virginia collected 601 pounds
- Medical City McKinney in McKinney, Texas collected 554 pounds
- StoneSprings Hospital Center in Dulles, Virginia collected 525 pounds
Community Health Systems completes divestiture of three Florida hospitals to Tampa General Hospital
Community Health Systems, Inc. announced that certain subsidiaries of the Company have completed the divestiture of Bravera Health Brooksville (120 licensed beds) in Brooksville, Florida, Bravera Health Spring Hill (124 licensed beds) in Spring Hill, Florida, and Bravera Health Seven Rivers (128 licensed beds) in Crystal River, Florida, along with their associated assets, physician clinic operations and outpatient services, to Tampa General Hospital and certain of its affiliates for approximately $294 million in cash, inclusive of estimated working capital and other purchase price adjustments. The transaction is effective December 1, 2023.
Premier, Inc.’s PINC AI™ Applied Sciences (PAS) and TFS HealthScience partner
Premier, Inc.’s PINC AI™ Applied Sciences (PAS) and TFS HealthScience are announcing a collaboration to accelerate global clinical trials and research innovation, improve patient outcomes and reduce health disparities.
The partnership will combine TFS’ capabilities, systems and clinical development expertise with PAS’ AI-enabled technology and comprehensive healthcare database. The collaboration will help expedite site and patient enrollment, reduce trial costs, accelerate the journey to commercialization, and ensure equitable access to groundbreaking medical solutions across diverse patient populations.
Eighty percent of all trials face premature termination or significant delays due to recruitment challenges – and marginalized populations, including Black and Hispanic individuals, remain historically underrepresented.
Leveraging comprehensive real-world data (RWD) and AI-enabled tools from PAS, TFS will gain enhanced capabilities to assess site suitability on a larger scale and focus on appropriate patient populations, investigator availability, therapeutic areas expertise and historical clinical trial performance metrics. This data-driven approach has already enabled PAS-supported trials to improve recruitment by 1800 percent and triple enrollment compared to baseline projections – significantly reducing enrollment periods and costs.
Two major Midwest health systems plan to combine
BJC Health System of St. Louis (“BJC”) and Saint Luke’s Health System of Kansas City (“Saint Luke’s”) announced they have entered into a definitive agreement to combine as an integrated, academic and patient-centric Missouri-based health system. The agreement follows a letter of intent signed in May 2023 by both organizations, and after satisfying all regulatory reviews. The transaction was expected to close Jan. 1, 2024.
As a combined system of approximately $10 billion in revenue with 28 hospitals and hundreds of clinics and service centers, BJC and Saint Luke’s will extend their shared commitment to deliver high-quality, affordable patient care to the communities they serve across Missouri, southern Illinois and eastern Kansas.
At the time of closing, Saint Luke’s will officially join BJC, and together, operate as a single, integrated health care organization that serves two regions with a distinct brand in each: BJC HealthCare in the St. Louis region and Saint Luke’s in the Kansas City region.
New data added to NASHP’s hospital cost tool
The National Academy for State Health Policy (NASHP) released an update to its Hospital Cost Tool to include 2022 data and new metrics on hospital labor expenses. As a result, users of this publicly available tool can access data on hospital costs such as operating profit margins, cost to charge ratios, breakeven points, and more for approximately 4,600 hospitals for 2011 through 2022.
As health care expenditures rise with the largest proportion of spending consistently on hospital care, state leaders are seeking assistance to understand and better address these high and rising prices and related costs. The hospital cost tool was developed as part of NASHP’s Center for Health System Costs, which is focused on supporting states to achieve increased affordability to ensure consumers have access to comprehensive, high quality health care.
States that are actively using the Hospital Cost Tool to inform state policymaking efforts include Texas, Indiana, and Rhode Island.