C. Wright Pinson

C. Wright Pinson is the Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Health Affairs at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee and serves as Chief Executive Officer of the Vanderbilt Health System. He oversees 2,000 academic physicians, 4 hospitals with 57,000 admissions/yr, 59,000 operations/yr, relationships with 28 other affiliated hospitals, 100 outpatient clinics with 1.8 million visits/yr, and a budget of $3.0 billion/yr. From 2004 to 2009, he was the Associate Vice-Chancellor for Clinical Affairs and Chief Medical Officer. He served as Chief of Staff of the Vanderbilt Hospitals (1997-2004). From 1993-2011, 6500 transplants of all types were performed while he was the Director of the Vanderbilt Transplant Center. From 1993-2004, he served as the Interim Chair, Vice-Chair and then H. William Scott Professor and Chairman of the Department of Surgery.

Dr. Pinson attended Miami University and the University of Colorado, graduating with distinction in Physics. While an engineer for IBM, he completed a Master's in Business Administration (finance). A 1980 graduate of the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, he trained in general surgery at Oregon Health Sciences University, and completed three fellowships: one in cardiovascular physiology as an American Heart Association Postdoctoral Research Fellow at OHSU; one in hepatopancreatobiliary surgery at the Lahey Clinic; and one in transplantation at Harvard University/Deaconess Hospital. He is boarded in surgery and in critical care.

He joined the faculty at Oregon Health Sciences University in 1988, initiating the first liver transplantation program in the Pacific Northwest, the first liver transplantation program in the V.A. system in 1989, and then was recruited to Vanderbilt University as Professor of Surgery to start the liver transplantation program and hepatobiliary surgery division in 1990. Dr. Pinson has been active teaching medical students and residents and has served as the program director for the Vanderbilt General Surgery Residency Program. He co-founded the Masters in Management in Health Care program and is a Professor in the Owen Graduate School of Business.

He has been an active clinical and laboratory investigator in the field of transplantation surgery, receiving numerous grants, the Sawyers research award, and the Liddle research mentoring award. He has authored more than 350 publications and given more than 800 scientific presentations and lectures. He has been on the editorial board of Annals of Surgery, the Journal of Gastrointestinal Surgery, Liver Transplantation and HPB. He is Past-President of the American and the International Hepatopancreatobiliary Associations.