For three years, HCA Healthcare Inc. President and Chief Operating Officer Sam Hazen has been Milton Johnson ’s right hand on corporate earnings calls, often fielding questions from analysts about emergency room visits or capital investments. Starting the first quarter of 2019, however, Hazen will be running the show.
HCA (NYSE: HCA) announced Monday that Johnson, HCA’s chairman and CEO, will step down at the end of the year to be succeeded by Hazen, who was also named to the hospital giant’s board of directors Monday.
The announcement is the culmination of a nearly 36-year career for Hazen, who will now lead Nashville’s largest publicly traded company, with $43.6 billion of revenue in 2017, according to Nashville Business Journal research.
After earning his bachelor’s degree in finance from the University of Kentucky in 1982, Hazen began his career in Humana’s Financial Management Specialist Program before holding chief financial officer positions at hospitals in Georgia and Las Vegas. He went back to school to earn his master’s degree in business administration from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, in 1988.
Hazen then joined HCA, working as CFO for two different divisions in the company and overseeing operations in North Texas before becoming chief financial officer for the Western Group from in 1995. In 2001, he was named president of HCA’s Western Group, which included all operations west of the Mississippi River and represented about one-half of the company’s revenue. He was promoted to chief operating officer of the entire company in 2015.
Center for Medical Interoperability CEO Ed Cantwell, whose organization works with several large hospital operators to improve the way the health care industry communicates, said that he hasn’t had the opportunity to work directly with Hazen, but that he has been one of the best COOs in the industry since taking over in 2015.
“He is probably as operationally savvy as anyone on the planet,” Cantwell said.
Hazen previously served on the board of the Federation of American Hospitals and is currently a board member of the HCA Foundation and the Nashville Health Care Council. Council President Hayley Hovious said Hazen has been active in strategic planning for the group, especially around bringing more IT talent to Nashville. He is a results-oriented leader, Hovious said, interested in measuring and analyzing outcomes.
“I’ve always found him to be really thoughtful and concerned about what’s best for HCA and what’s best for the industry,” Hovious said. “[Johnson] has been an amazing advocate for the city and I would expect that Sam will be the same.”