Piedmont Healthcare announced Tuesday that its longtime CEO, Tim Stack, had passed away at age 60.

Greg Hurst, Piedmont’s president of finance and development, will continue to handle the duties of CEO that he took over when Stack went on medical leave in early June.

Stack had led the nonprofit Piedmont since December 2001, building an organization with two hospitals into a five-hospital system with a 900-member physician network and $1.6 billion in annual revenues.

He also led Piedmont to develop Atlanta’s first integrated cardiovascular program affiliated with a community health system. The Piedmont Heart Institute now employs more than 100 cardiovascular experts.

Under Stack’s leadership, Piedmont ignited the consolidation trend that has redrawn the health care landscape in metro Atlanta.

Stack pushed for a major revision of the formula for the state’s hospital provider tax. Under the current formula, which ends next year, Piedmont is one of the hospitals losing money, while other hospitals benefit. The tax helps fund the state’s Medicaid program.

Stack also understood how the world of health care reimbursement was changing rapidly, in the wake of the passage of the Affordable Care Act. Here’s a Georgia Health News article about a March symposium Stack attended where he spoke about the new payment model.

He is survived by his wife, Mary, and sons Tim, Ryan and Matthew.