Philanthropy

Premier Renames CLARION Award in Honor of Retiring CEO and SPH Alumnus

Richard Norling has spent his career focused on improving the quality, safety, and cost-effectiveness of patient care.

A graduate of the SPH’s Master of Healthcare Administration program, Class of 1975, Norling is retiring after 12 years as president and CEO of the health care alliance Premier, Inc. To honor his contributions to the company and to care improvement, Premier is making a gift to the University in Norling’s honor.

The company’s gift—$15,000 per year for 10 years— goes to the newly renamed Premier Richard Norling Scholarship Fund. Scholarships from this fund will be awarded to students who show their commitment to improving health care by participating in the CLARION National Case Competition.

CLARION—a University of Minnesota organization started by Master of Healthcare Administration students and housed in the Academic Health Center’s Center for Health Interprofessional Programs—is designed to give health professional students a “360-degree” look at how collaboration across disciplines can help solve problems in the current health care system.

Every year, the group holds a national competition through which four-student teams, which include students from at least two disciplines, are given case studies and are charged with finding the cause of the problem and recommending solutions. Judges evaluate each team’s analysis in the context of “real world” standards of practice. Students on the first-, second-, and third-place teams receive financial awards through CLARION.

“The Premier board of directors is pleased to support CLARION students and to reward their case work in improving the quality and safety of health care,” says chairman Lowell Kruse, who is also president and CEO of Heartland Health and an SPH alumnus (M.H.A. ’67). “Initiating and sustaining health care improvement through collaboration has been a priority goal of Richard Norling and the members of the Premier alliance, and this scholarship award ¿ creates incentives for a new generation of students to follow this example.”

Frank Cerra, senior vice president for health sciences at the University, says Premier’s gift acknowledges the importance of CLARION and its participants.

“The future of health care resides in the success of programs like CLARION, something recognized by Rick Norling and Premier,” Cerra says.

Norling’s education at the SPH isn’t his only connection to the University: He also served as president and CEO of Fairview Hospital and Healthcare System from 1989 to 1997.

Today Norling says he’s proud to have this CLARION scholarship bear his name.

“The goals of this program are wholly consistent with the values that I have worked to instill within Premier,” he says. “I look forward to playing a role in rewarding innovative ideas to resolve challenges facing the health-care system— for the benefit of patients nationwide.”