• By MARSHA SHULER
• Advocate Capitol News Bureau
• Published: Jul 21, 2010 - Page: 14A

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State health chief Alan Levine said Tuesday that he has landed a job with Health Management Associatesm of Naples, Fla.

The privately owned firm operates 58 hospitals in 15 states.

Levine announced earlier this month that he was stepping down after two-and-a-half years as secretary of the state Department of Health and Hospitals to return to Florida.

Levine said Tuesday he reports to work on Aug. 9 as senior vice president for health development and government relations for the publicly traded, investor-owned HMA.

“It’s a good blend of responsibilities that keeps me engaged in public policy and back to my first love, which is running hospitals,” Levine said. “It’s a good fit.

“The position allows me to still keep engaged in health policy,” he said.

He said he also would oversee the activities of HMA’s lobbyists in Washington as well as Tallahassee.

Levine said he would live in Naples but also continue to maintain a home in Tallahassee.

HMA operates acute-care hospitals, primarily in the Southeast and Southwest U.S. The facilities are mostly in non-urban areas. According to the HMA website, the firm’s hospitals closest to Louisiana are in the Mississippi towns of Natchez and Biloxi.

Levine leaves the post as head of DHH on Aug. 1. Gov. Bobby Jindal has already named Bruce Greenstein, a Microsoft managing director over health-care technology, as Levine’s successor.

Levine was chief executive officer of Broward Health, a public hospital system in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., at the time he accepted Jindal’s appointment as Louisiana’s health chief.

Previously, he had been a chief aide to Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, then head of that state’s Agency for Health Care Administration from 2004 to 2006.

In Florida, like in Louisiana, Levine presided over a revamp of the state’s Medicaid health-care delivery system for the poor.