Dick Davidson, president of the American Hospital Association since 1991, will retire from the post, effective Jan. 1, 2007. Davidson is the second longest-serving president in the association’s 108-year history. The AHA also announced that the association’s Board of Trustees has chosen Richard J. Umbdenstock, a top executive with Providence Health & Services in Seattle, as Davidson’s successor. Umbdenstock will join the AHA as chief operating officer and president-elect in June before assuming the presidency next year. Umbdenstock recently served as the AHA’s Board chairman, a volunteer post from which he has resigned. The Board has asked AHA’s immediate past chair, George Lynn, president and chief executive officer of AtlantiCare in Atlantic City, N.J., to fill the remaining months of Umbdenstock’s term.
While at the AHA, Davidson helped establish the Institute for Diversity in Health Management and spearheaded the Hospital Quality Alliance—a public/private partnership that created publicly available information on hospital quality measurement nationally for the use of both consumers and internal hospital quality improvement. In 2004 and 2006, the association established two centers devoted to improving hospital and health system governance and quality and patient safety.
Before the creation of Providence Health & Services, Umbdenstock served as president and CEO of the Spokane, WA-based Providence Services for more than a decade.
To read the AHA's announcement, click here.
