Marcia Gomez
New Position: Vice president, clinical innovations, Humana, Tampa. Previous Position: Medical director, health services, Humana, Miramar
By Times Staff Writer
Published July 18, 2005
Although her new office is in Tampa, Dr. Marcia Gomez still puts in time in Miami, shuttling between the two cities to work on innovative wellness programs for Humana.
In her new role as vice president of clinical innovations, she is looking for new ideas and programs that will involve the insurance company's commercial clients: employer groups representing about 350,000 people statewide.
Clinical programs, Gomez explained, "cover the entire spectrum from wellness programs through our case management into the specific disease management programs."
One such innovative program instituted by Humana is at the University of Miami. "Not only is this the traditional relationship, where they are employers and we provide insurance for their employees, but we're partnering with them on multiple levels.
"We have nurses that are on site at the university clinic, and they are working with behavioral modification techniques and are an active part of the trauma team, working hand in hand with the doctors in getting information to members, advising of health plan benefits, just kind of wrapping things up at the end of a visit," Gomez said. "That's innovative in that it's not a traditional role for insurers."
Gomez continues to oversee this pilot program at the university from Tampa. In addition, Gomez said, a similar program is being explored with the Hillsborough County school system, another employer insured by Humana.
"We're looking at working with them to do on-site wellness activities (and) help them with health care screenings, provide information on nutrition and fitness (and) new nutritional supplements."
Gomez said she likes being out of the office as much as possible, meeting with doctors, nurses and school district officials. "Every day is a little bit different," she said.
Born in Cuba, Gomez came to Florida when she was 3. She earned a bachelor's degree in biology from the University of Miami in 1979 and then went straight into that university's medical program, earning her M.D. in 1983. She specialized in internal medicine with an additional year of neurology training, she said.
She did her medical residency at Jackson Memorial Hospital at the university from 1983 to 1987 and started her career at a clinic in Miami. In 1990, Gomez went into private practice at Emery Hospital in Miami in internal medicine.
Two years later, she joined Humana as physician adviser in quality. She held subsequent administrative jobs with Pacific Care Health Systems and BlueCross BlueShield before returning to private practice in 2001 - this time in Las Vegas.
"I'd been in an administrative role for a while," Gomez said. "As a physician, you start to get antsy about your practice skills and being current."
In 2002, she returned to Miami - and Humana - as medical director of health services.
With her relocation to Tampa, Gomez lives in Lakeland - her husband works in Orlando - and said, "Commuting is part of my life. It's been as nice as 50 minutes and as bad as 21/2 hours. So we picked a happy medium - or perhaps an unhappy medium."
Gomez said she chose medicine as a career because "I think you can see the result of doing good on an individual level. In the position I have now, I can also see doing good on a larger group of people. You have the ability to get wellness programs going, to get the word out on nutrition and the importance of preventive care, and be doing so on a larger scale than one-on-one in an office."
The one-on-one doctor-patient relationship is very special, Gomez said. "That confidentiality, that bond. It goes beyond the official sort of relationship. You see (patients) as an extended family."
Gomez, 46, and her husband, Jim, have an 11-year-old son, Grant.
And they share a joint hobby: aviation. Gomez's husband is a flight instructor, and Gomez said she is taking flying lessons from her husband. With family still living in Miami, Gomez said they try to take at least one short weekend flight a month to South Florida or other points around the South in their four-seat Mooney M-20K single-engine plane.