Name: Lance Anastasio
Age: 67
Family: Will be married for 45 years in June to his wife, Sherry; daughters Kristine Tindle (42) and Dawn Dickey (39).
Residence: Winter Haven
Education: Bachelor's degree in biochemistry from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and a master's in business administration.
Career: I've always been on the medical side of things. I started in a teaching hospital. While in graduate school, I worked as a clinical chemist, until I got my MBA, then I managed the lab. I was in Madison a year and a half for prerequisites and it took a year and a half to get the degree itself for the MBA. I came to Winter Haven in December 1969 as the financial officer to Winter Haven Hospital. Those responsibilities consisted of accounting functions and managing the business office.
What brought you to Winter Haven? The person I reported to, the vice president at the University of Wisconsin, had been the preceptor to the administrator at Winter Haven Hospital, and he introduced us. We carried on a correspondence. Now, I've been here just over 40 years.
What is a general day like for you at the hospital? I come in at 7:30 a.m. and we have a series of meetings with physicians and the management team. Once a week, we tour the hospital to look for needs of change and what improvements we could do to make things better. We have 16 board members. I try to see a board member every day, or at least communicate with one every day. The board has three physicians on it and there are always issues. It's important to communicate with them first, especially with the new health-care reform. We have made a commitment to hear from the community, hospital staff and the board regarding our continued plan that contains the areas we are working on to grow, and to continue to improve the emergency room, although we are showing a 90 percent patient satisfaction in our most recent data.
What makes you the most proud in working with this hometown hospital? Our improvements against national data, our Society of Thoracic Surgery at the Bostick Heart Center and our stroke program has exceeded the national guidelines in performance. I am proud and excited about how rapidly we get things done. For the last four years, the Winter Haven Hospital has been listed in U.S. News and World Report, ranked in the top 10 percent of all hospitals in the nation, for both heart and stroke.
What are your plans for the future? This year we are hoping to get our diabetes program accredited. Part of it will be in the community with programs that will educate. That is an important element, as well as working internally. The hospital has been accredited through JCAHO (Joint Commission on Accreditation on Health Care Organizations) for more than 40 years. We are working toward getting a supplemental accreditation for the diabetes separately. That would be a separate comprehensive designation for diabetes. In the cancer department, we have a contract with the University of Florida and have brought on board Dr. Bob Cassell, a hematologist/oncologist. We are very near completion for the recruitment of two more urologists that would be faculty at the University of Florida and part of the faculty here. We feel that an affiliation with the university is important to serve the community.
What's the toughest thing about your job? Trying to balance the needs of the patients, employees, doctors and obtain the goals of the board. In December 2008, we were designated as a magnet hospital. There are a little over 300 hospitals out of 6,000 hospitals in the country that are magnet. This is important to the patients and gives a great deal of satisfaction to the employees. We staff higher in numbers than average hospitals, to meet the guidelines of the magnet program. In addition, the staff members are involved in management so they share in the governance, and they have input in a systematic way. We made a decision when we opened the Bostick Heart Center that we had to adjust ourselves to these higher standards.
What's the most exciting thing about your job? It's exciting to plan all of these things and then execute the plan, and to be in the top 10 percent in the nation is immensely gratifying. A second is to see people join the organization, and to see the community value the hospital with their satisfaction of the services we are providing.
What do you do in addition to your service at Winter Haven Hospital? I am on the board of directors for WEDU (television), I was president of Voluntary Hospitals of Florida, on the Florida Hospital Association board, and was president of the Greater Winter Haven Chamber of Commerce.
What do you do to relax? I rollerblade when the weather permits. I go to Fort Fraser Trail. My wife and I like the Broadway theater and we have tickets to the Tampa Bay Performing Arts. We like football and go to games at Florida State University, where our daughters went. We also enjoy our four grandchildren.
What do you like most about Polk County? I like the combination of the location, with the small-town atmosphere and the proximity of the big cities. And the people are nice here. It's a good place to raise children.
