Dean's Roundtable 2017

Charles Sorenson, MD, FACS, HS'82 - Dist. Service Award 2017

Charles W. Sorenson, MD, FACS, is President Emeritus of Intermountain Healthcare and the Founding Director of the Intermountain Healthcare Leadership Institute, a position he assumed in October 2016.  Opening in 2018, the Institute will offer a variety of leadership development courses, including a program designed for selected high potential leaders from the US and abroad.  Led by a faculty from Intermountain, other distinguished health systems, and recognized content experts, this program will focus on principle-based decision making and leading at the critical juncture of clinical and administrative expertise.

Dr. Sorenson served as President and CEO of Intermountain Healthcare from January 2009 until his retirement from this position in October 2016. Prior to that, he served for eleven years as Intermountain’s Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer.

Dr. Sorenson, a graduate of the University of Utah (BA Biology) and Weill Cornell Medical College at Cornell University (MD), is a board-certified Urologic Surgeon and a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons.  He began his practice at Intermountain’s LDS Hospital in Salt Lake City in 1982. His professional activities have included serving as President of the Medical Staff at LDS Hospital, chairing the Committee on Young Surgeons for the American College of Surgeons, and serving as President of the Utah Urologic Society and as Speaker of the House of Delegates of the Utah Medical Association. He is an Adjunct Professor of Surgery at the University of Utah.

Dr. Sorenson has a long-standing interest in clinical process improvement and in the development of Intermountain’s integrated delivery system. In 1994 he was one of the founding members of the Intermountain Medical Group, an integrated practice of approximately 1,500 physicians and advanced practice clinicians employed by Intermountain, and served as the founding chair of the Medical Group Board from 1994 to 1998.  

Under Dr. Sorenson’s leadership, Intermountain Healthcare implemented a disciplined and system-wide focus on best clinical and operational practices aimed at producing measurably better outcomes for patients at costs that are sustainable to the communities Intermountain serves.  

In addition to his administrative responsibilities, Dr. Sorenson has continued to be involved in the practice of urologic surgery at the Intermountain Medical Center, with a primary focus on urologic oncology.  Dr. Sorenson and his wife, Sharee, are the parents of four adult children.

Thomas Coppin, MD'67 - October 2017 Dean's Roundtable

Dr. Coppin was born in Salt Lake City, and raised in Provo and Brigham City. He graduated from Utah State University and the University of Utah School of Medicine. A distinguished military graduate of ROTC, he had a 30-year Army career with a rotating internship and residency in pathology, served in Germany, was an exchange officer as consultant pathologist at the Royal Army Medical College in London, and was Chief of Pathology and Residency Program Director for 15 years at Madigan Army Medical Center, Tacoma, Washington. For three years he was also Pathology Consultant to the Army Surgeon General. 

He returned to Utah in 1993, worked for FHP and Paracelsus Hospital, and was 9 years as a pathologist at Lakeview Hospital in Bountiful. He is a past president of the Utah Society of Pathologists and for four years was the state commissioner for laboratory accreditation for the College of American Pathologists. In 2007 Dr. Coppin organized and became project director for Pathologists Overseas to restore surgical pathology to a 1,000-bed teaching hospital in Kumasi, Ghana, recruiting and managing rotating volunteers for the next three years. He and his wife currently serve at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City.

Deans Roundtable - Brian Shiozawa, MD