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Josh Adler

New Position: Chief executive, Suncoast Medical Clinic, St. Petersburg. Previous Position: Vice president, business development, ChemConnect Inc., Houston

By FRED W. WRIGHT JR.
Published February 21, 2005

For Josh Adler, joining Suncoast Medical Clinic was like coming home, personally and professionally.

As a native of Tampa, Adler has family in the bay area. He also began his health care management career in Tampa in 1984 at his father's pediatric practice.

When his own family began to grow, Adler decided it was time to return to his roots, and to the health care management field, after a six-year hiatus.

"We had a baby while we were in Houston and I wanted to move back to Tampa," said Adler, who was vice president of business development for ChemConnect Inc. "My family's here."

As chief executive of Suncoast Medical Clinic, Adler said he spends "a great deal of time looking at the strategic plan (and) recruiting physicians. We're adding physicians in certain (specialty) areas."

Adler joined the clinic last year, initially as executive director. After a few months, he was promoted to chief executive.

Other responsibilities include managing the clinic's day-to-day operations, he said. Suncoast Medical Clinic has 51 physicians and about 200 employees, he said, in six locations. Adler is responsible for overseeing human resources, IT, managed care, business services and finance, he said.

"I set expectations at the beginning of the year and provide a strategic plan to physicians and the management team," he said. For the rest of the year, Adler said, he then measures the results against the strategic plan.

"I think there's incredible opportunity for health care to provide better services, be more patient-centric and help people get healthier quicker," he said. "I've had an opportunity to see how good companies succeed. I get a feel for what people do right and what people do wrong."

Adler attended St. Johns Episcopal Day School in Tampa and then went to a boarding school in Massachusetts. In 1981, he earned a bachelor's degree from Brandeis University in Boston with a major in American studies. He earned a master's degree in health in 1984 from Tulane University in New Orleans.

He then went to work for his father, Philip Adler, a pediatrician, managing the solo medical practice in Tampa. In the next 10 years, Josh Adler said he grew the practice from one physician to 10 and from one site to three. The practice was sold in 1994 to a larger medical group, First Physician Care. (Dr. Adler is now chief of neonatology at St. Joseph's Hospital in Tampa and in private practice with Health Point.)

Adler stayed with First Physician Care for the next four years as vice president of market development. When that company was sold, he joined AmComp, an insurance company in West Palm Beach, as vice president of business development, where he stayed two years.

In 2000, he became vice president of business development at ChemConnect, an Internet-based company that connects buyers and sellers in the chemicals industry, relocating first to San Francisco, then to Houston.

"I spent the first 14 years of my career in physician management practices," he said, "the last six outside of health care. But I returned to health care - truly my passion."

Adler, 45, and his wife, Pam, live in the Hyde Park area of Tampa with their 2-year-old daughter, Audrey. When possible, Adler said he likes to be out on the water with his family. "We head for the beach every summer," he said.

[Last modified February 19, 2005, 17:32:02]