Business profile

Thomas Logan Malone Jr.

NEW POSITION: CEO, Florida Medical Quality Assurance, Tampa.

PREVIOUS POSITION: CEO, Mid-South Foundation for Medical Care, Memphis, Tenn.

Thomas Logan Malone Jr. moved from Tennessee to Sarasota planning to retire and play golf.

His retirement lasted six months.

Malone, 71, now makes a 129-mile, round-trip daily commute to Tampa, where he was recruited to be chief executive of Florida Medical Quality Assurance. The organization monitors and tries to improve the quality of health care for Medicare recipients in the state.

"We look at the quality, necessity and appropriate care given by providers -- hospitals and physicians -- to Medicare beneficiaries," he said.

Each state has a Medicare peer review organization. Malone's agency gathers data that Medicare collects and compares it statistically with other data showing "aggregate performance in the state, in other states and the nation, and (we) go back to the hospital and physicians and report our findings," Malone said.

It's a cooperative educational process, he said.

"They are expected to change. Our findings are that all these providers have the right attitude. They want to do good care.

"We don't practice medicine, nor do we direct people who practice medicine," he said. "We just give them a best-practices report."

Florida Medical Quality Assurance, in a separate program, also monitors Medicare for payment or coding errors and comparing data.

Malone began his career in the medical field after a long military career and a stint as an educator. Malone was encouraged to come out of retirement because he said he likes challenges.

Before moving to Sarasota, Malone worked for 10 years at Mid-South Foundation for Medicare Care in Memphis, an agency similar to Florida Medical Quality Assurance.

Prior to that, he was headmaster of a private school in Memphis for two years and earned a doctorate in education from the University of Memphis at age 59. "I thought that would be my life's work," he said.

He also was president of a division of First Tennessee Bank of Memphis after retiring from the Navy in 1982 as a rear admiral. During his 30 years in the Navy, he was commander of both ballistic missile and attack submarines and was commander of all NATO submarines in the Mediterranean for two years in the late 1970s.

The Navy prepared him for his career in education and management, he said.

"You learn to work with people on a submarine for sure, and that applies everywhere you work, he said. "It's a people world."

Malone and his wife have six children and nine grandchildren.

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