Prominent health care leader finds his way to Sarasota

It took 13 months, but the Sarasota Memorial Health Care System has finally landed a long-sought after hire in bringing on Dr. Ralph Tufano, a widely recognized leader in the management of thyroid/parathyroid disease. 

“When we initially contacted Dr. Tufano, he was very interested in discussing the possibility of relocating to the Sarasota community,” says Joelle Hennesey, director of physician and advanced practice provider recruitment for First Physicians Group, in an email. “Dr. Tufano has personal connections to other physicians in the region so he already knew there was a deficit in thyroid and parathyroid surgeons, and that many patients in the community needed to travel more than an hour away from home to get necessary treatments.”

Then a series of phone and video calls, site visits, extensive interviews and a lot of pre-work began. After more than a year, Tufano had what he needed to build the system’s first multi-speciality practice dedicated to the care and treatment of patients with thyroid nodules, cancers and other diseases and disorders of the thyroid and parathyroid glands. He officially joined Sarasota Memorial First Physicians Group in July. 

Tufano comes to Sarasota from Baltimore, where, for 20 years, he held a series of medical roles. A professor. A researcher. A practicing surgeon. And even the director of the Multidisciplinary Thyroid Tumor Center and division of Head and Neck Endocrine Surgery at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. With a background like that, no wonder SMH officials were hot to land him.