What are the red flags for Michelle Hood?

AHA Dossiers Power Map About

Michelle Hood

EVP & Chief Operating Officer

Executive Vice President & Chief Operating Officer, AHA; President & CEO, Health Forum | American Hospital Association

Last verified November 4, 2026

5 Red Flags

Affiliations

•Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of the AHA and President and CEO of Health Forum, AHA's for-profit subsidiary; she remains on the Executive Management Group under new CEO Steve Walsh as of November 2026.
•Joined AHA in April 2020, succeeding retiring COO Maryjane Wurth, after leading Northern Light Health (formerly Eastern Maine Healthcare Systems), described by NCHL as a $2 billion integrated system serving all of Maine; her CEO tenure there ended March 31, 2020.
•Earlier roles included President & CEO of Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth Health System's Montana region (St. Vincent Healthcare, Billings), senior roles at Norton Healthcare in Louisville, and more than a decade at Emory University Hospital.
•Former member of the AHA Board of Trustees before moving onto the association's payroll.
•Member of the National Center for Healthcare Leadership (NCHL) Board of Directors since 2020, the National Academy of Medicine's Leadership Consortium and the International Hospital Federation's Scientific Advisory Council.
•Selected for NCHL's 2026 Gail L. Warden Leadership Excellence Award, to be presented Nov. 17, 2026 in Chicago; NCHL is an organization on whose board she sits.
•Listed as a board member of the University of Maine System and Maine Coast Memorial Hospital in MarketScreener's insider profile.

Financial / Compensation

•Hood's reportable 2024 AHA compensation was $1,915,883, plus $51,639 in other compensation, per AHA's 2024 Form 990.
•That is up from $1,845,465 in 2023, as reported by Paddock Post from the 2023 Form 990.
•The 2024 Form 990 reports $0 in compensation to Hood from related organizations, meaning her Health Forum CEO role is not separately paid through any entity the 990 discloses.
•The 2023 Form 990 disclosed first-class travel for the CEO and two EVPs, spousal travel for the CEO, taxable benefit allowances for SVPs and above, and a supplemental non-qualified deferred compensation plan; as one of AHA's two EVPs, Hood is in the first-class travel tier.
•AHA's 2024 Form 990 reports total revenue of $146.7 million against expenses of $169.3 million, a $22.6 million operating deficit, with net assets falling from $289.8 million to $277.6 million during the year.
•Former CEO Rick Pollack's reportable 2024 compensation was $5,823,759 (plus $55,174 other compensation), up from $3,396,123 in 2023.

Lobbying and Political

•Hood is not a registered federal lobbyist on AHA's 2025 or 2026 LDA reports; her role is operations, membership and Health Forum's commercial business, which funds the advocacy machine.
•AHA's in-house LDA reports show $25.47 million in federal lobbying for 2025 (Q1 $7.03M, Q2 $6.15M, Q3 $5.72M, Q4 $6.57M); that total already includes about $1.68 million paid to outside lobbying firms.
•AHA's 2026 in-house lobbying fell sharply during the CEO transition: $6.08 million in Q1, $4.47 million in Q2 and $3.84 million in Q3, or $14.39 million year to date, plus about $1.07 million to outside firms.
•AHAPAC reported $3.49 million in receipts for the 2025-2026 cycle through Oct. 14, 2026, with $2.30 million in contributions to other committees, $1.26 million in independent expenditures, and cash on hand down to $683,005.
•AHA's Q3 2026 LDA report lists issues including site-neutral payment cuts and facility fees, the 340B PATIENTS Act, not-for-profit hospitals' tax-exempt status, the Tax Exempt Hospital Transparency Act (H.R. 9504) and health care price transparency.

Revolving Door

•Moved from the AHA Board of Trustees, as a member-system CEO, to the AHA's No. 2 staff job in 2020: governance-to-payroll rather than government-to-industry.
•Serves on the NCHL board while receiving NCHL's 2026 leadership award.
•No federal or state government service is publicly reported.

Home System Record

•AHA ran a $22.6 million deficit in 2024 while Hood's pay rose about $70,000 and the CEO's reportable pay jumped by roughly $2.4 million.
•Health Forum, which Hood runs, is AHA's for-profit arm that sells data products (including AHA Annual Survey data), publishing, education and vendor sponsorships built on member-hospital relationships.
•AHA's federal lobbying spend in the first half of 2026 was $10.55 million, down 20% year over year per Becker's, and Q3 2026 ($3.84 million) was its lowest quarter in the 2025-2026 filings.

Litigation and Scrutiny

•No personal litigation, enforcement action or ethics complaint involving Hood has been publicly reported.
•AHA, with the Maine Hospital Association and four safety-net systems, won a preliminary injunction on Dec. 29, 2025 blocking HRSA's 340B Rebate Model Pilot; the 1st Circuit denied a stay Jan. 7, 2026, the government dropped its appeal Jan. 20, and HHS said Feb. 5, 2026 it would scrap the pilot.
•AHA sued again on Oct. 9, 2026 in the District of Maine to block HRSA's revised rebate pilot, set to launch Jan. 1, 2027; drugmakers and PhRMA have moved to intervene.

Red Flags

Hood holds the No. 2 job at a tax-exempt trade association while running its for-profit subsidiary, and the 990 reports no separate Health Forum pay, so the nonprofit's dues-funded payroll is carrying the CEO of a commercial business.

Health Forum monetizes data and access that member hospitals supply through their nonprofit association membership, selling it back to the market and to vendors.

Her compensation rose to $1.97 million all-in for 2024 in a year AHA ran a $22.6 million deficit and drew down net assets by $12.2 million.

She is in the first-class travel tier and eligible for a supplemental non-qualified deferred compensation plan, perks paid by hospital dues while AHA tells Congress hospitals are financially fragile.

Her award from NCHL comes from an organization whose board she sits on.

Pattern Summary

Michelle Hood is the AHA's operating chief and the executive who runs Health Forum, the association's for-profit monetization arm. A former member-system CEO and AHA trustee who moved onto the staff payroll in 2020, she survived the Pollack-to-Walsh transition intact. Her 2024 pay of about $1.97 million rose even as AHA posted a $22.6 million deficit, and the 990 shows the nonprofit alone paying her to run a for-profit subsidiary.

Michelle Hood

Red Flags

Sources and Citations