Management
Richard A.
(Rick) Norling
President and chief
executive officer
A broadly experienced healthcare executive and frequent speaker on
healthcare strategies, organizational development and quality
management, Richard A. Norling is president and chief executive officer
of Premier, Inc.
Premier is one of the nation’s largest healthcare strategic alliance enterprises, jointly owned as a shared resource by approximately 200 not-for-profit hospitals and health systems. They operate or are affiliated with about 2,000 hospitals and hundreds of other care sites.
Premier’s activities are intended to help members improve the quality, safety, and cost-effectiveness of their core clinical care processes and to help members improve the supply chain management that has a significant effect on the cost and outcome of care. Among Premier services for healthcare organizations are a group purchasing program providing contracts for approximately $31 billion a year in healthcare supplies and equipment, Healthcare Informatics services including comprehensive comparative databases for identifying performance improvement opportunities and benchmarking, insurance programs, and advocacy.
Norling joined Premier in September 1997, initially as chief operating officer. Before that, he was president and chief executive officer of Fairview Hospital and Healthcare System, headquartered in Minneapolis/St. Paul and serving the people of Minnesota through an integrated system of hospitals, clinics, and other service sites.
As CEO of Fairview, Norling served as a member of the board of directors of American Healthcare Systems (AmHS). Working as a board committee member, he was instrumental in shaping the merger of AmHS with the former Premier Healthcare Alliance (PHA) and SunHealth Alliance to form today’s Premier effective Jan. 1, 1996.
Before joining Fairview, Norling was executive vice president and chief operating officer of UniHealth America, a not-for-profit system of hospitals and healthcare organizations headquartered in Burbank, Calif.
Norling is involved as a member and leader in a number of professional, business, and healthcare industry organizations. He is past president of the Board of Directors of the Malcolm Baldrige Award Foundation, and continues to serve on this board. He has continued to advocate the criteria of the Award as foundation for effective leadership of enterprises.
He was for many years a member of the board of directors of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, led by Dr. Don Berwick and a unique American resource involving clinicians and their organizations in concerted efforts toward targeted healthcare quality and safety improvements.
Norling earlier was a Visiting International Fellow at the King’s Fund in London. He continues to participate in and provide presentations for international health care studies.
He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the national cross-industry Healthcare Leadership Council in Washington, D. C. He chairs the Council’s national task force working toward increased safety for patients receiving health services.
Formerly, Norling was a member of the Board of Directors of Express Scripts, Inc., Pacificare Health System, and Blue Cross of California.
Norling earned a master’s degree in hospital administration at the University of Minnesota and a master’s degree in systems engineering at the University of Arizona.