Thomas F. Frist Jr.

Thomas F. Frist Jr., known as Tommy Frist, is a Nashville native and a graduate of the city’s Montgomery Bell Academy and of Vanderbilt University. While at Vanderbilt he started a collegiate advertising company and earned his pilot’s license.⁠[1]

He earned his bachelor’s degree from Vanderbilt in 1961 and his doctor of medicine degree from Washington University School of Medicine in 1965.⁠[2]

His father, Thomas F. Frist Sr., was a cardiologist. His brother, Bill Frist, was majority leader of the U.S. Senate from 2003 to 2007.⁠[2][3]

After medical school, Frist returned to Vanderbilt for his surgical residency. During the Vietnam War the residency was interrupted by a two-year term as a flight surgeon at Robins Air Force Base in Warner Robins, Georgia.⁠[1]

At Robins he served as a Strategic Air Command flight surgeon, and while in the military he conceived a company that would bring hospitals together to share resources.⁠[2][1]

In the 1960s, when chain retailers were becoming dominant in a range of industries, Frist believed the same economies of scale could be used to build better hospitals.⁠[2]

Frist took the idea of a multi-hospital, for-profit corporation to his father, and the two partnered with businessman Jack C. Massey to found Hospital Corporation of America (HCA, now HCA Healthcare) in 1968, one of the first investor-owned hospital companies in the United States.⁠[2][4][1]

The first hospital the new company acquired in 1968 was Park View Hospital, which Frist Sr. and a group of Nashville physicians had established in 1961.⁠[4]

HCA acquired eleven hospitals in its first year, a number that grew into the hundreds in the 1970s and 1980s; the multi-hospital system used its greater purchasing power to lower the cost of supplies and equipment.⁠[2]

In 1977 Frist became president of HCA.⁠[2]

From August 1985 until September 1987, Frist was chairman and chief executive officer of Hospital Corporation of America; from 1988 to February 1994 he was chairman, president and chief executive officer of HCA-Hospital Corporation of America.⁠[5]

In February 1994, Columbia acquired HCA-Hospital Corporation of America in a merger, forming Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corporation. Frist was chairman of the combined company from February 1994 to April 1995 and became vice chairman in April 1995.⁠[5]

Richard Scott resigned as chairman and chief executive officer of Columbia/HCA on July 25, 1997, and Frist became the company’s chairman and chief executive officer that month.⁠[5]

On July 24, 2006, HCA announced a merger agreement with a private equity consortium of Bain Capital, KKRKKRKKR (Kohlberg Kravis Roberts) is an investment firm engaged in alternative asset management, capital markets services, and insurance. Jerome Kohlberg, Henry Kravis, and George Roberts co-founded the firm in 1976. Its managed funds invest in private equity, credit, and real assets, and its subsidiary Global Atlantic operates retirement, life insurance, and reinsurance businesses. KKR listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2010 under the ticker KKR.Open the full entry and Merrill Lynch Global Private Equity under which shareholders would receive $51 per share in cash, a premium of about 18% to the July 18 closing price, in a transaction valued at about $33 billion including roughly $11.7 billion of assumed or repaid debt.⁠[6]

Frist, as HCA’s founder, was named among the acquirers alongside the sponsors and contributed equity to finance the deal; he and related persons agreed to vote their shares in favor of the merger.⁠[6]

On November 16, 2006, HCA shareholders approved the merger agreement, and the company expected the transaction to close the following day.⁠[7]

In 2007 Frist and his son-in-law, Charles Elcan, founded China Healthcare Corporation, with the aim of using HCA’s operating principles to meet hospital needs in China.⁠[2]

Frist held a series of leadership roles at HCA, including president, chief executive officer and chairman; he remained on HCA’s board of directors until 2009 and later became chairman emeritus.⁠[1]

After two management buyouts, Frist took HCA public for the third time in 2011.⁠[3]

On May 19, 2017, Washington University in St. Louis awarded Frist an honorary doctor of humane letters degree. The university had given him a Distinguished Alumni Award at Founders Day in 1989, and he and his wife, Patricia, committed to fund its newly established Frist Scholars Program for undergraduates.⁠[2]

In its March 2026 World’s Billionaires list, ForbesForbesForbes is an American business media brand that began with Forbes magazine, founded by B.C. Forbes in 1917. It is known for rankings such as the Forbes 400, the World’s Billionaires list and 30 Under 30, and operates Forbes.com, ForbesLive events and licensed editions in 81 countries. Since 2014 a majority stake has been held by the Hong Kong investment group Integrated Whale Media; a 2021 plan to list on the New York Stock Exchange through a special purpose acquisition company was terminated in 2022. It is headquartered in Jersey City, New Jersey.Open the full entry estimated the net worth of Frist and his family at $41.1 billion; its real-time estimate as of November 4, 2026, was about $37.7 billion. Forbes lists the source of wealth as hospitals and classifies him as self-made.⁠[3]

Frist and his family own around 32% of HCA; he holds no executive position at the company.⁠[3]

HCA Healthcare owns and operates 190 hospitals and around 2,400 sites of care in 20 U.S. states and the United Kingdom.⁠[3][4]

While chairman of the United Way of Middle Tennessee, Frist established the Alexis de Tocqueville Society for donors of $10,000 or more; by 2017 it had expanded to 430 cities worldwide, with 25,876 members who had donated an additional $9 billion to United Way. He chaired United Way’s Board of Governors and received the United Way Lifetime Achievement Award in 2012.⁠[2][4]

Frist and the HCA Foundation provided the lead gift to establish Nashville’s Frist Center for the Visual Arts, now the Frist Art Museum, where he is chairman emeritus; Forbes lists him as the museum’s director emeritus.⁠[2][3]

He has chaired the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce and served on the boards of IBMIBMIBM (International Business Machines Corporation) is an American information technology company, renamed in 1924 from the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (C-T-R).Open the full entry, Harvard Business School and Montgomery Bell Academy; he has also been vice president of Vanderbilt’s Board of Trust and was a key founder of the high school division of Nashville’s Ensworth School.⁠[2]

He was an inaugural inductee of the Tennessee Health Care Hall of Fame and has received awards including the Nashville Business Journal’s “Best in Business Lifetime Achievement Award.”⁠[1]

Forbes records his remark: “You always win when you surround yourself with good people.”⁠[3]

HCA Healthcare: Official website: https://hcahealthcare.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[4]