Joseph R. Swedish
President and CEO
Trinity Health
Novi, Michigan

Over a career spanning 35 years, Joseph R. Swedish has built a legacy of dynamic leadership and service excellence.  Since becoming president and CEO of Trinity Health in January 2005, Swedish has focused his leadership on the transformation of health care delivery through improved clinical and business processes and expanding access to the growing population of underinsured patients. 

Describing Trinity Health as a Unified Enterprise Ministry®, Swedish leads the nation’s fourth-largest Catholic health system by leveraging its scale and skill to create efficient and effective quality care for everyone.  Under his leadership, Trinity Health has accelerated its performance financially and operationally as the result of strategic and tactical initiatives focused on six imperatives: community benefit ministry, patient care excellence, best people/spiritual workplace, physician alignment, financial stewardship and growth/collaboration. Trinity Health is a recognized leader in quality improvement and innovation having received the National Committee for Quality Health Care 2004 Award.

Swedish has diverse senior executive operations experience in both investor owned and non-profit health care systems that spans faith based and secular health care, university and community based academic medical centers, integrated delivery systems and regional rural referral hospitals in the mid-Atlantic states, Florida, Colorado and now seven states that encompass Trinity Health’s markets. 

Prior to joining Trinity Health, Swedish was president and CEO of Centura Health, the largest health care provider in Colorado with twelve hospitals that combined the operations of Catholic and Seven Day Adventist hospitals. The faith-based system won both national and international awards for excellence in patient care and for the successful incorporation of spirituality into the health care workplace.  He was previously president of the East Florida and Central Florida Divisions for the Hospital Corporation of America.

Swedish serves on numerous boards and committees, including the Institute for Diversity in Health Management as its Chair-Elect. He is a member of the Catholic Health Association and its Board of Trustees, and the National Center of Healthcare Leadership as a board member. He is the Chair of the Institute for Diversity in Healthcare Management.

He is a Fellow in the American College of Healthcare Executives and received its Regent's Award for Career Achievement. He is a member of the American Hospital Association’s Long Range Policy Committee and has served as a member of the AHA Regional Policy Board – Region 8. In 1999, he was elected Chairman of the Colorado Hospital Association Board of Directors.

Mr. Swedish was awarded the University Medal by the Board of Regents for the University of Colorado. He received the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year, Rocky Mountain Region related to Centura Health’s achievement in growth and operational performance.

He received a bachelor’s degree from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and a master’s degree in health administration from Duke University.