PATRICIA GONDOLFO

PATRICIA GONDOLFO

Chief Operating Officer, Radiation Therapy Services

executive session by Jean Gruss | Editor/Lee-Collier

Fort Myers-based Radiation Therapy Services recently hired Patricia Gondolfo to the newly created position of chief operating officer. The publicly traded company operates primarily under the name 21st Century Oncology, running 69 treatment centers in 14 states; it's the largest operator of radiation therapy centers in the country.

Gondolfo has 18 years experience in the health care industry and was most recently chief financial officer of Mount Kisco Medical Group, a large New York-based physician group.

PERSONAL

Age: 46

Family: Married, husband Robert Gondolfo. Two children.

Hometown: San Francisco. "My parents are first generation American. They're Irish. My father was the CEO of a company. It was a precursor of FedEx. It was called Domestic Air Express. They shipped small packages overnight around the world. A small package cost $250 in those days. When he became CEO we relocated to New York."

Education: Masters in Public Health, Columbia University.

Outside interests: Horseback riding and sailing.

Books on your nightstand: Conspiracy of Fools, Good to Great, The Leadership Secrets of Billy Graham and mysteries for pleasure.

Favorite music genre: Country.

Favorite country artists: Clint Black and Patty Loveless. "There's a new guy, Josh Turner, who's got a beautiful voice."

First paying job: "Working at a pharmacy as a stock clerk and I ended up managing the pharmacy. I started work at 15. I was about 18 when I became manager. My father died when I was a teenager so financially things changed very radically and I needed to work my way through college and that's how I did it."

PROFESSIONAL

How you got started in healthcare? "My start in healthcare was through a practicum program. I was pre-med at Columbia. I decided toward end of the pre-med program that that was not my strongest talent, that I had considerably more difficulty doing science courses than math courses. I made a decision that I would stay in healthcare but that I would not be on the medical side and that I would pursue more of the business side. To do that, if you have no prior healthcare experience, you have to do what's called a practicum. One of the professors at Barnard was a bioethics professor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, which is affiliated with Montefiore [Medical Center], and he got me an internship there while I was going to graduate school. I was offered a job as an administrator when I completed my masters. I was there 10 years."

What did you do after Montefiore? "I left healthcare. I went into partnership with someone I knew socially who owned rights to Ben & Jerry's franchises in Connecticut. So I left healthcare entirely. Because I had run pharmacies, I had an interest in having my own business. We expanded to six locations in Connecticut. I got married and had a baby during that time. I did that for a little over four years. Then Montefiore called and asked me if I could do them a favor and do some consulting. When I put a suit on and went back in there, I realized I missed the intellectual challenge of working with professional people and clinical people. Operating ice cream stores is intellectually not as stimulating as working in the complexity of healthcare and I missed it and I decided I probably should return. I saw an ad in the New York Times for a CFO of a medical group. I had been director of finance as an administrator at Einstein Hospital at the end of 10 years. It was a very good fit. I started working there in 1997. They were a 38-doctor practice in a very affluent community and they are a top-drawer, best-of-the-best physician group. It was called Mount Kisco Medical Group. It was reorganized shortly after I got there and had unprecedented success. It tripled in size."

POSITION

What does the chief operating officer position entail? "Everything related to the delivery of medical services outside the physician oversight. It's the tech, the equipment, the coordination of the care, and coordination of the activities surrounding the treatment of the patient that day. It will include billing. I would consider my role as coordinating the growth that is in front of this company. They don't need to market themselves. They get approached every day for new opportunities. Developing those opportunities, which are mostly partnerships, and executing them well and maintaining the clinical standards across every center that they own and operate."

What's at the top your agenda? "One is to do acquisitions effectively and number two, how are we going to be able to employ sufficient number of people for that growth in a market that's dramatically changed in what it costs to live here."

How many acquisitions does the company plan? "They have a committed growth rate of between 18% and 20%. They could probably grow 30% to 40% if they wanted to. They have that many opportunities in the pipeline."

Is it hard to shift from working for a privately held company to one that is publicly traded? "Given that I was a CFO before and a compliance officer in a previous role, I've always carried a very high standard. I see some of the regulatory requirements in the same way you see them in healthcare, they're cost additive without clear value.

What is your long-term goal? "That this company be one of the top employers and make the Fortune 500 top employer for its size. I think it has the talent. I think it has the commitment to its employees to be one of the best places to work. We'd like to make that list. I won't say when, but that would be one of my goals as a COO. Given what we do, if this is the best place to work, what we do for patients and our performance will be there. I think in healthcare organizations what you do is reflective of who works for you."

INDUSTRY

How do you view the rapidly rising cost of healthcare? "I think I see that issue differently because I travel between my parents' home country [of Italy], which has a socialized system, and here. The American culture is very different. My graduate thesis was 'Is there a right to healthcare in the United States?' And really what it comes down to is good health status is the base for so many other privileges in this country. Inherently, we believe there is a right to access to healthcare. If you look at our social programs you would see that. The United States is always going to spend more dollars of its GNP on healthcare because they prize health status. I think the dilemma going forward is you can't ask someone to do nine to 12 years of training and pay them something less than what an attorney would make. What we're asking physicians in this country to do is to solve the healthcare problem off their own individual earnings and I don't think that's fair. I do believe that no matter what the solution is, this country is going to continue to pay a higher average because it prizes equal access and the quality of care that we now get. The technology that you and I are experiencing in the United States, many other developed nations do not have them yet. And there's a price to be paid for that. I don't know about you, but if I have cancer, I'd like to live in the country that has the best [treatment]. Everybody comes here for treatment."

Are you concerned about employers shifting a great part of the healthcare costs to employees? "I see that as problematic. I think that if there is no cost sharing at all there will be over utilization at a certain level. But I don't think that people have unnecessary surgery. I'm concerned about the average family with the average income needing to pay out of pocket $2,000 to $3,000 a year, when maybe their combined income is $50,000 to $60,000. So I don't think that's a trend that's terribly fair to the majority of working Americans."

Do you see that trend worsening? "I see it worsening and then the pendulum will swing back because it will start becoming a point of recruitment. As a COO, I'm worried about recruitment and retention and one way to have long-term employees is to provide a benefit package that is meaningful. I think medical costs should be deductible on your tax return. We have to be careful with these Health Savings Accounts. For the average person, they will not adequately cover them in the event of a catastrophic illness. And you're going to have more and more medical bankruptcies."

Radiation Therapy Services

Headquarters: Fort Myers

President, CEO: Daniel Dosoretz

2005 Revenues: $227 million

Stock symbol: RTSX

Recent stock price: $25

52-week stock-price range: $16 to $39

Price-earnings ratio: 24

Dividend: N/A

Market capitalization: $578 million

Sources: Securities and Exchange Commission, Yahoo Finance