Florida Medical Clinic Family Practice Land O Lakes
By Diane Kortus Mathes
Staff Author
State O' LAKES — Information technology'southward been an incredible journeying for Florida Medical Clinic.
In just xvi years, the physician-endemic medical practise has grown from nine doctors to 100. Its original v physician offices in Zephyrhills and Dade Urban center are now xvi offices in Wesley Chapel, New Tampa, Carrollwood and a make new location in Land O' Lakes.
There's no question that the practice'south Land O' Lakes facility is its showpiece. The $eight.5 million, 32,000-square-human foot, 2-story, Spanish-way edifice is topped with a striking red tile roof. Within, floors are marble tile, ceilings are high and medical specialties open out to primal courtyard-like areas. Big windows permit in vivid, natural light and expect out over a landscape of re-located palms and acres of generally undeveloped land.
The clinic is the largest and almost visible edifice on the busy SR 54 corridor between I-75 and US 41, and is the first structure completed on the 205-acre Terra Bella property.
When announced in 2006, the planned customs of Terra Bella called for 311 apartments, 250 homes and a 32,000-square-human foot mini-mall on 206 acres between Livingston Artery and 20 Mile Level Route. The projection was to be a new eastern gateway to Land O' Lakes.
While the recession has stalled those projects, Florida Medical Clinic never faltered on its timetable. The dispensary opened in September with 20 physicians in xi specialties, including the cadre specialties of family unit medicine, cardiology interventional pain medicine and dermatology. It also houses a diagnostic laboratory and X-ray services.
Guiding the complex to its successful opening was Joe Delatorre, chief executive officer of Florida Medical Clinic.
"We never slowed down our plans for Country O' Lakes when the economic system slowed," he said. "There were very few options for healthcare in this marketplace and nosotros were needed here."
The 48-year-old Wesley Chapel resident has led Florida Medical Clinic since the practice was established in 1993. Its five founding physicians recruited Delatorre to run all business aspects of their new practice to allow them to focus on taking care of patients. The concept of physicians using a business director was a relatively new idea 20 years agone, Delatorre said.
"Florida Medical is all about doctors who simply want to be doctors," said Delatorre. "I was hired to practise everything else."
Delatorre was uniquely qualified for the chore. The son of a physician who taught at the University of Florida, Delatorre was a 1988 University of Florida graduate, earning masters in business assistants and health sciences.
One of his first jobs out of college was at Dade City Hospital (at present Pasco Regional Medical Heart), where he was chief executive officer at age 29. It was 1991 and the hospital was endemic by Humana Hospitals. After a twelvemonth in Dade City, the corporation promoted Delatorre to CEO of the much larger Humana Women's Hospital in Tampa.
Two years later on, Humana sold the hospital to St. Joseph'due south and offered Delatorre some other top position in Texas. At the same time, St. Joseph'south wanted him to stay on to atomic number 82 its new management team.
Instead, Delatorre went with the vision of five doctors he knew from his year in Dade City to manage their new partnership in East Pasco.
Why did he accept the take a chance of a new venture instead of the security of a large corporation?
"I was young and entrepreneurial," Delatorre said. "I knew I could always get dorsum to the corporate world considering I had a successful tract record. But I thought the surroundings was right to aid doctors run their business, and these were five people I knew and trusted."
Nether Delatorre'due south leadership, the young practice grew apace. In Oct of 1993, Florida Medical Clinic bought 12 acres and a vacant strip center on United states of america 301 in Zephyrhills for $800,000 and began a $two.four 1000000 renovation. A little more than a year later, in January1995, Delatorre moved his doctors into the new facility.
Side by side upwardly on Delatorre'due south mission to capture market share in East Pasco was Wesley Chapel. In 2000, Florida Medical Clinic purchased an old Shoney'south eatery on SR 54 and I-75 and expanded it from v,600 to 10,000 square feet.
In 2002, it recruited two premier gastroenterology offices in North Tampa, which were the catalyst for moving into New Tampa and building an ambulatory surgery middle on Bruce B. Downs not far from Academy Community Hospital. Then it was Carrollwood, with an office at Bearss Avenue and Dale Mabry Highway.
In 2005, Florida Medical Dispensary bought its 10 acres in Country O' Lakes for $3.5 million and began to program its mother ship. Now that its State O' Lakes facility is completed, Delatorre said they are looking at adding a 10,000 square-human foot administrative building behind it.
Today, but about every medical specialty is found at Florida Medical Clinic, with the exception of obstetrics and pediatrics. Delatorre said those specialties volition likely become function of the grouping when the right opportunities present themselves.
Florida Medical Dispensary is the tertiary largest doc grouping in the Tampa area, after the University of South Florida and Watson Dispensary in Lakeland. It employs 130 medical providers and 700 support staff.
The Clinic remains doctor owned and operated, with 68 doctors as shareholders.
"Every doctor is eligible to go a partner after three years," explained Delatorre, a model which he says attracts some of the best doctors in the country.
Delatorre has lived in Saddlebrook since 1995 and before then in the Lake Padgett community in Land O' Lakes. Married to Kelley for 26 years, their daughters attended uncomplicated and middle school at Academy at the Lakes. Stephanie, 22, is a 2009 graduate of the Academy of Virginia and Shannon, 18, graduated high schoolhouse final spring from Academy of Holy Names in Tampa.
Not many people know that Joe Delatorre's parents escaped from Cuba in 1961 when his female parent was eight months meaning with him.
"My father likes to say that I was manufactured in Cuba and built-in in the United states," he said.
After fleeing the Castro regime, his dad relocated the family to Virginia were he completed his medical residency in psychiatry at the University of Virginia and later settled permanently in Gainesville.
Since his stint at Dade City Infirmary in the early on 1990s, Pasco County has been Delatorre's home.
"This is a community I love that has given me and my family so many opportunities," he said. "Information technology's groovy to requite something back."
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