Frist is a co-founder and the major shareholder of HCA Healthcare, an administrator of 186 hospitals across its network. The Nashville-based company is publicly traded and serves more than 43 million patients per year in hospitals and clinics across 20 US states and the UK. HCA reported revenue of $65 billion in 2023.
The majority of Frist's fortune is derived from a 26% stake in HCA Healthcare, a publicly traded health services administrator. He controls the shares through Nashville, Tennessee-based Hercules Holding II, a limited liability company whose investors include the billionaire's two sons. Frist and his sons own almost 70 million shares of HCA, according to HCA's proxy form filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission in 2024. He's credited with all of these shares to reflect his status as co-founder.
HCA has 186 hospitals serving more than 43 million patients in 20 US states and the UK, according to the company's website.
Frist also has personal investments sourced from HCA share sales and dividends, including a one-year payout of more than $500 million in 2012.
Tika Love, a spokesperson for Frist, said the billionaire declined to comment on the net worth calculation.
Thomas Fearn Frist Jr. was born on Aug. 12, 1938. His father was a cardiologist in Nashville. "Tom" got a bachelor's degree from Vanderbilt University before earning an M.D. from the Washington University School of Medicine. He served as a military flight surgeon after medical school.
He founded Hospital Corp. of America in 1968 with his father and Jack Massey, who was an early investor in the Kentucky Fried Chicken chain and, later, in Wendy's. The company became one of the earliest for-profit health-care operators in the country.
Frist became president of HCA in 1977, and, a decade later, its chairman and chief executive officer. He served as the company's chairman upon the merger of HCA with Columbia in February 1994, and later as vice chairman, following the company's April 1995 merger with HealthTrust. He returned as chairman and CEO of the company in 1997, a role he held until January 2001.
In 2006, he helped orchestrate the privatization of HCA for $31.6 billion, then the largest leveraged buyout in history, with money from Merrill Lynch, KKR, Bain Capital and the Frist family. The company sold shares in an initial public offering about four years later.
Frist is the founder of the Alexis de Tocqueville Society, a United Way offshoot that promotes philanthropy. He's also the chairman of the Frist Foundation, his family's Nashville-based charitable arm, and the Frist Center for the Visual Arts, also in Nashville.