Tenet Healthcare announced Thursday that Howard Hacker has been named senior vice president and chief compliance officer, a role that will begin on May 2. As chief compliance officer, Hacker will manage and oversee the company's ethics and compliance program.
The announcement comes a day after Tenet dropped out of the Standard & Poor's 500 stock index due to its its falling stock price and investor unease over a rocky past few months.
As of Thursday, Tenet's market capitalization was down 50 percent from July 2015, landing at about $2.8 billion. The company lost $140 million last year, reports say, due in part to a False Claims Act settlement.
[Also: Tenet Healthcare will pay $238 million to settle maternity referral kickback allegations]
Hacker will report directly to the Quality, Compliance and Ethics Committee of Tenet's board of directors.
Trevor Fetter, chairman and chief executive officer of Tenet, said in a statement that Hacker's hiring reflects the organization's desire to "operate from a strong foundation of values supported by an effective compliance program."
"Integrity is an essential part of Tenet's culture," said Hacker in a statement.
He replaces Vanessa Benavides, who left Tenet to assume the leadership of compliance and privacy operations at Kaiser Permanente. Previously, Hacker spent more than a decade at Pfizer, where he served in various roles within its legal and compliance teams.
Twitter: @JELagasse