• Essent Healthcare's (Nashville, Tennessee) reported that interim CEO Mike Browder has been named permanent CEO of the eight-year-old hospital company. Browder joined Essent as CFO in 2001 and was named interim CEO last November. Essent acquires community hospitals and provides them with financial resources and the expertise.

• Michael House has been named senior project management consultant for Greencastle Consulting (Malvern, Pennsylvania). House comes to Greencastle from Cheshire Medical Center/Dartmouth Hitchcock Keene. Greencastle is a project management and consulting services firm focused "on clinical transformation through healthcare information technology."

• HC Innovations (Shelton, Connecticut) has named two healthcare industry professionals to its management team. Brett Cohen has been named the executive VP of operations and Tina Bartelmay has been appointed execiutive VP of sales and marketing. Cohen joined HC Innovations as the VP of strategic development in 2007. Bartelmay brings more than 24 years of healthcare experience to HC Innovations, where she has focused her energies during the past 15 years in the care and disease management sectors. HC Innovations provides what it calls "high-touch services" to patients with complex medical needs.

• Tim Shannon has been named VP of sales and marketing, Americas, for Mentice (Evanston, Illinois). Shannon poreviously held leadership positions at GE Healthcare, Datascope and VisualSonics. Mentice makes virtual reality-based training applications for medicine.