Bill Frist

William Harrison Frist (born February 22, 1952) is an American physician, businessman, and politician who served as a United States senator for Tennessee from 1995 to 2007. A member of the Republican Party, he also served as Senate majority leader from 2003 to 2007. Born in Nashville, Tennessee, Frist studied government and health care policy at Princeton University and earned a Doctor of Medicine degree from Harvard Medical School. He trained as a cardiothoracic transplant surgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital and Stanford University School of Medicine, and later founded the Vanderbilt Transplant Center. In the 1994 United States Senate election in Tennessee, he defeated incumbent Democratic senator Jim Sasser.

After serving as chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Frist succeeded Tom Daschle as the Senate Majority Leader. Frist helped pass several parts of President George W. Bush's domestic agenda, including the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003 and the Medicare Modernization Act. Frist left the Senate in 2007, honoring his pledge to serve no more than two terms.

In his post-Senate career, he serves as chair of the global board of The Nature Conservancy. He is also a founding partner of Frist Cressey Ventures, a special partner and chairman of the Executives Council of the health service investment firm Cressey & Company, and co-chair of the Health Project at the Bipartisan Policy Center. From 2019 to 2022, he hosted the A Second Opinion Podcast on the intersection of policy, medicine, and innovation.

Frist was born in Nashville, Tennessee, the son of Dorothy (née Cate) Frist and Thomas Fearn Frist Sr. He is a fourth-generation Tennessean. His father was a doctor and co-founded the health care business organization which became Hospital Corporation of America (HCA). Frist's brother, HCA co-founder Thomas F. Frist, Jr., became chairman and chief executive of HCA in 1997. His other siblings include Robert A. Frist; Dorothy F. Boensch; and Mary F. Barfield.

Frist graduated in 1970 from Montgomery Bell Academy in Nashville, and then from Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs in 1974. Frist was a member of University Cottage Club while he was a student at Princeton. In 1972, he held a summer internship with Tennessee congressman Joe L. Evins, who advised Frist that if he wanted to pursue a political career, he should first have a career outside politics. Frist proceeded to Harvard Medical School, where he received the degree of Doctor of Medicine with honors in 1978.

While he was a medical school student in the 1970s, Frist acknowledged in his book Transplant that he performed medical experiments and vivisection on shelter cats while conducting research at Harvard Medical School. He writes about having succumbed to the pressure to succeed in a highly competitive medical school, acknowledging it was "a heinous and dishonest thing to do." This issue became controversial in his first Senate campaign in 1994, and gained national attention after his election to Senate majority leader.

While in medical school, Frist joined the laboratory of W. John Powell Jr. at Massachusetts General Hospital in 1977, where he continued his training in cardiovascular physiology. In 1978, he became a resident in surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital. In 1983, he spent time at Southampton General Hospital, Southampton, England as a senior registrar in cardiothoracic surgery. He returned to Massachusetts General in 1984 as chief resident and fellow in cardiothoracic surgery. From 1985 until 1986, Frist was a senior fellow and chief resident in cardiac transplant service and cardiothoracic surgery at the Stanford University School of Medicine. There, he trained under Norman Shumway, a pioneering surgeon known as the father of heart transplantation.

After completing his fellowship, Frist became a faculty member at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, where he began a heart and lung transplantation program. There, he performed the first heart-lung transplant in the Southeast. And in 1990, he performed Tennessee's first single-lung transplant, a notoriously difficult procedure. He also served as a staff surgeon at the Nashville Veterans Administration Hospital. In 1989, he founded the Vanderbilt Transplant Center, which today performs more heart transplants than any other center in the world.

In 1991 Frist operated on then–Lieutenant Colonel David Petraeus after he had been shot in a training accident at Fort Campbell. Their paths crossed again when Frist was elected to the Senate and Petraeus rose through the military ranks to General. They later ran the Army 10-miler together in 2002 in Washington, DC.

In 1992, Frist organized a statewide grassroots campaign to return the organ donation card to the Tennessee driver's license and received the Distinguished Service Award from the Tennessee Medical Association for his efforts.

In 1995 Frist, then a sitting senator, successfully resuscitated a constituent suffering a heart attack in the Dirksen Senate Office building.

In 1990, Frist met with former Senate majority leader Howard Baker about the possibilities of public office. Baker advised him to pursue the Senate and suggested in 1992 that Frist begin preparations to run in 1994. Frist began to build support. He served on the Tennessee governor's Medicaid Task Force from 1992 to 1993, joined the National Steering Committee of the Republican National Committee's Health Care Coalition and was deputy director of the Tennessee Bush-Quayle 1992 campaign.

During the 1994 election, Frist promised not to serve for more than two terms, a promise he honored.

Frist accused his 1994 opponent, incumbent senator Jim Sasser, of "sending Tennessee money to Washington, DC", and said, "While I've been transplanting lungs and hearts to heal Tennesseans, Jim Sasser has been transplanting Tennesseans' wallets to Washington, home of Marion Barry." During the campaign he also criticized Sasser for trying to become Senate Majority Leader, claiming that his opponent would be spending more time taking care of Senate business than Tennessee business. Frist won the election, defeating Sasser by 211,062 votes in the 1994 Republican sweep of both houses of Congress, thus becoming the first doctor in the Senate since June 17, 1938, when Royal S. Copeland died.

In his 2000 reelection campaign, Frist easily won with 66 percent of the vote. He received the largest vote total ever by a statewide candidate. Frist's 2000 campaign organization was later fined by the Federal Election Commission for failing to disclose a $1.44 million loan taken out jointly with the 1994 campaign organization. Frist paid a civil fine of $11,000 in a settlement with the FEC.

Frist supported the Iraq war while in the Senate; he supported the initial invasion as well as the war during the Iraqi Insurgency.

Frist was mentioned as a potential 2008 Republican presidential candidate and as a potential 2010 Republican candidate for Governor of Tennessee. Ultimately, he did not run for either office.

In 2009, Frist stated that he would have broken with his party by voting in favor of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which was unanimously opposed by Republicans. In January 2011, after the Republicans regained a majority in the House, Frist called on them not to attempt to repeal the health care law.

In 2008, he became a partner in Chicago-based Cressey & Co., investing in the nation's health care market. Today, he serves as special partner and chairman of the Executives Council at Cressey.

In 2013, Frist partnered with Brad Smith to start Aspire Health, which grew to be the largest non-hospice community-based palliative care company in the U.S. before it was acquired by Anthem in 2018. The care model was inspired in part by the team-based approach Frist had used in caring for patients awaiting transplants.

In 2015, Frist co-founded Frist Cressey Ventures, a Nashville-based venture capital firm focused on partnering with early-stage healthcare companies. He is an active partner in the firm today.

In June 1989, Frist published his first book, Transplant: A Heart Surgeon's Account of the Life-And-Death Dramas of the New Medicine, in which he wrote, "A doctor is a man whose job justifies everything ... Life [is] a gift, not an inalienable right."

With J. H. Helderman, he edited "Grand Rounds in Transplantation" in 1995, which described case studies in kidney, heart, lung, liver, and bone marrow transplantation drawn from Vanderbilt's case load.

In October 1999, Frist co-authored Tennessee Senators, 1911–2001: Portraits of Leadership in a Century of Change with J. Lee Annis Jr.

In March 2002, Frist published, When Every Moment Counts: What You Need to Know About Bioterrorism from the Senate's Only Doctor, sharing practical guidance following the 2001 anthrax attacks on how to stay safe in the event of a bioterrorism attack.

In 2003, Frist and co-author Shirley Wilson released the book, Good People Beget Good People: A Genealogy of the Frist Family.

In 1981, Frist married Karyn McLaughlin. They had three sons: Harrison, Jonathan, and Bryan. The Frist family were members of the National Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C. The Frists were divorced in December 2012.

On May 29, 2015, Frist married Tracy Lynne Roberts (b. April 14, 1962). The couple resides in Franklin, Tennessee.

Frist was named one of the 100 Most Powerful People in Healthcare by Modern Healthcare in 2002, 2003 and 2004. He was also named to The Time 100: The 2005 list of the world's most influential people by Time Magazine.

In 2001, he received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.

In 2003, Frist received Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson Award, which is conferred annually upon an alumnus or alumna of the undergraduate college whose achievements exemplify Woodrow Wilson's memorable phrase, "Princeton in the nation’s service."

In 2011, he received the Al Ueltschi Award for Humanitarian Leadership in recognition of his life-saving efforts worldwide, and the importance of business aviation to those endeavors.

Between 1997 and 2006, Frist received honorary degrees from five historically black colleges and universities, including Fisk University, Howard University, LeMoyne-Owen College, Meharry Medical College, and the Morehouse School of Medicine.