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Pat Mabe

New Position: Chief executive, Community Health Centers of Pinellas, St. Petersburg. Previous Position: Supervisor, school health services, Pinellas County School System, Largo

By Times Staff Writer
Published March 7, 2005

All her career, Pat Mabe has been nursing, either patients in a one-on-one setting or entire organizations.

Now, Mabe is chief executive of Community Health Centers of Pinellas, which cares for an estimated 5,000 uninsured patients, as well as those insured through Medicare, Medicaid or private insurance, each month.

"We're growing," she said. "There's lots of need for our services in Pinellas County."

Since taking the position Jan. 31, Mabe said, she has been learning the needs and services of the centers in their five locations. Her responsibilities include overseeing clinical and financial operations of all the centers in Pinellas "and making sure the underserved in Pinellas are taken care of."

Mabe is based at the Johnnie Ruth Clarke Health Center at Mercy Hospital in St. Petersburg. "I work out of there, mainly," she said, "but I'm at all of the centers. The Clearwater Center is moving to a new location on Lakeview Road in April, so I'll be there a lot."

Mabe has worked in the Tampa Bay area most of her career, including a decade as vice president of patient care services at Bayfront Medical Center, which she says was the ideal preparation for her new position.

While at Bayfront Medical Center from 1987 to 1997, Mabe said, she discovered "the whole issue of why I'm doing this. I learned service to the community."

A native of Roanoke, Va., Mabe attended Radford University in Radford, Va., earning a bachelor's degree in nursing in 1975. She later earned a master's degree in public administration from Golden Gate University in San Francisco.

She began her career as a staff nurse in Roanoke in 1975, moving to Tarpon Springs three years later to join the education department at University Community Hospital, "teaching other nurses how to do chemotherapy." Mabe left to join Memorial Hospital in Tampa in 1980, then went to Bayfront in 1987.

In 1997, she went to work at Presbyterian Healthcare Systems in Charlotte, N.C., as vice president of patient care, but she missed Florida.

"There's no water in Charlotte. By 2001, I decided I had enough of North Carolina and came back to Florida." She joined LifePath Hospice in Tampa as vice president of clinical services.

What led her to then join the Pinellas County School System, in 2003, as supervisor of school health services?

One big motivator, Mabe says, is that she and her husband have raised four sons. "Florida has been very good to me and my family," she said. "I love kids. The school system was an opportunity to give back to my community.

"I've always had respect for teachers. I have four boys, (so) you'd have to have respect for teachers."

Also, nurses in a public school system like Pinellas County's have many more challenges today, Mabe said. "They have to go to 150 schools. Nurses aren't just putting on Band-Aids anymore," she said.

Mabe said that while she misses hands-on nursing care, she is "passionate about care for patients and for children. And I think really finding new and better ways to take care of folks is really exciting.

"And I think that to get back every day from what we give the community is sometimes better than a paycheck," she said. "It keeps you warmer at night."

Mabe, 51, and her husband, Robert, live in Tampa.

They like to travel, now that their sons are grown. They plan a fall trip planned to Fiji, New Zealand and Australia, Mabe said. "I'm trying to get my stamina up for those climbs," she said. "I want to walk on a glacier (and) not break a hip."

[Last modified March 4, 2005, 19:24:03]