hospital impact

Happy thanksgiving! Well, in the spirit of this holiday, I'd like to share one news story that made some shareholders very, very thankful, I'm sure.

A very weird thing happened last week. Burke Whitman went from being CFO at Triad Hospitals to President/COO at HMA. That's not particularly weird, as Burke Whitman is a highly-sought after hospital exec who just returned from serving in Iraq.

The weird thing was Wall Street's response. As a result of one man's job switch, Triad's stock lost more than 3% that day or $120,000,000 in market cap whereas HMA stock gained 8% or $460,000,000 in market cap.

No offense to Mr. Whitman, as he's a great exec and a great soldier, but $460,000,000? Assuming that Mr. Whitman will make a comparable salary to the rest of the HMA Exec Team ($570k - $1.5MM), he probably represents the best $1MM dollars HMA has ever spent.

Once in a while, you bump into people who think their hospital CFO is a turkey, but Mr. Whitman is anything but - just ask the shareholders of HMA who, I'm sure, are having a very happy thanksgiving.