Founder, Executive Chairman of the Board of Directors
A founder of the company, Dan serves as Executive Board Chairman having served as CEO from 2005-2013. With more than 30 years of hospital experience, he is a nationally recognized leader within the healthcare industry. He has led hospitals across the country of varying sizes and scopes – from small, rural facilities to large, urban academic medical centers.
A member of the Board of Directors for the Federation of American Hospitals, which represents over 1,100 hospitals, Dan also serves on the organization’s Audit, Rural Healthcare, and Legislative committees. Through his involvement with the FAH as well as the American Hospital Association and the Nashville Health Care Council, he is an active contributor to the national discussions that shape the industry’s future. In 2009, he was named to Modern Healthcare’s list of “Top 100 Most Powerful People in Healthcare.”
In 2011, he was awarded one of the region’s first National Outstanding Eagle Scout Awards by the Boy Scouts of America’s Middle Tennessee Chapter, in recognition of his professional and personal accomplishments. Earning Eagle Scout recognition at age 13, Dan is a lifelong supporter of Scouting and credits this experience with having made a significant difference in his life, impacting both his personal values and professional accomplishments. In 2012, he was named a Nashville Health Care Hero by the Nashville Business Journal. According to the NBJ, the accomplishments of Nashville’s “…thirty most influential leaders, innovators, strategists and caretakers …is helping to grow the region’s health care industry and reinforcing Nashville as the health care capital of the nation.”
He began his career as a Certified Public Accountant, holding positions as Chief Financial Officer for HCA and HealthTrust hospitals; Division VP for HealthTrust, as well as Division VP and Group VP for HCA Florida. In September 1997, he was promoted to Senior Vice President with HCA to oversee the reorganization of the company’s non-urban hospitals into the company which would become LifePoint Hospitals, Inc.
In February 2003, Dan became President and Chief Operating Officer of Province Healthcare, a non-urban hospital company that ultimately was acquired by LifePoint Hospitals, Inc. in 2005 for $1.7 billion. While at Province, he was responsible for broad-based corporate activities and hospital operations through three operating divisions.
Dan has had direct operational responsibility for more than 150 hospitals in 29 states throughout a career that included mergers & acquisitions, investor relations, market strategies, physician recruitment and integration, clinical and operational management, joint venture structuring, information systems development, revenue cycle management, and HIPAA implementation, as well as ethics and compliance program supervision.
Dan earned a bachelor’s degree in accounting from West Virginia University and attended graduate school at the University of Miami and Virginia Tech.
Outside his work at Capella, Dan has been active with a number of non-profit organizations, including Middle Tennessee Council of Boy Scouts, Association of Retarded Citizens, American Heart Association, and the Nashville Ballet, which he has served as President. Dan and his wife, Lisa, have two sons.