D. Bruce Pattison has been appointed president and chief operating officer ofSaliva Diagnostic Systems(New York). Pattison has been working closely with the company as a consultant over the past five months. Most recently, Pattison negotiated the sale of Arrow International’s drug delivery business to Johnson & Johnson (J&J) and then joined J&J as executive director of drug delivery. Saliva Diagnostic Systems manufactures a rapid point-of-care testing device for infectious diseases, as well as oral fluid specimen collection devices using a patented volume adequacy indicator for drugs of abuse testing and other clinical uses.

Gary Honts was named CEO of Community Hospital of Los Gatos, California, part of Tenet California (Santa Ana, California). Honts is a veteran Tenet hospital administrator, most recently serving as executive vice president and chief operating officer of Hilton Head Regional Medical Center (Hilton Head, South Carolina). Community Hospital of Los Gatos has grown into a 143-bed, acute-care hospital that provides general and specialty medical services with a staff of more than 900 employees and a medical staff of more than 600 physicians and allied health professionals.

Casey Tansey has been named a general partner of venture capital firm U.S. Venture Partners (USVP; Menlo Park, California), specializing in early stage investments in medical device technologies and biopharmaceuticals. Tansey joins USVP as a managing member of USVP Management Co. and of Presidio Management Group IX, the general partner of USVP IX, the firm’s new $600 million fund. Most recently, Tansey was president and CEO of Epicor Medical, recently acquired by St. Jude Medical.

Vikram Jog has joined XDx (South San Francisco, California) as CFO. Most recently, Jog served as vice president of finance for Celera Genomics and Celera Diagnostics. XDx, a molecular diagnostics company, has developed a new method for non-invasively monitoring the immune system by measuring gene expression in a patients’ peripheral blood.