HCA Promotes Bovender to Chief Executive

HCA-The Healthcare Co., the nation’s largest for-profit hospital chain, named Chief Operating Officer Jack O. Bovender Jr. its new chief executive. Bovender, 55, also will continue as president, a position he has held since August 1997. Dr. Thomas F. Frist Jr., one of the company’s founders, is giving up the chief executive title, but he will remain chairman. Last month, Nashville-based HCA announced it will pay the federal government more than $840 million in criminal fines and civil penalties in the largest government fraud settlement in history. More than half the settlement stemmed from charges that the hospital chain for years routinely inflated the seriousness of pneumonia diagnoses to increase payments from government health-care programs. Bovender has spent more than 20 years working for HCA in two separate stints. He left when HCA merged with Columbia in 1994 then returned after Frist resumed control in 1997. HCA shares rose $1.21 to close at $39.36 on the NYSE.