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If Centra Southside Community Hospital's new CEO Tom Angelo could have picked a different way to enter the healthcare field, he'll be the first to tell you, he would have.
When he was only 18, Angelo and a friend stopped to assist a stranded motorist who was stalled in the breakdown lane. Moments later an intoxicated driver, attempting to bypass traffic, struck the disabled vehicle. Angelo's friend was killed and Angelo was critically injured. He suffered extensive damage to his legs and underwent multiple surgeries, which forced him to spend several months in a wheelchair. Angelo had to learn to walk again and it was these very tragic events that started him on a career that would be dominated by a desire and passion to help and heal.
While going through his own slow process of recovery and rehabilitation, Angelo, who was in the Navy at the time, also worked in the hospital's orthopedic department, specializing in casting and traction. This was later followed by a position at Memorial Medical Center in Springfield, near where he grew up in Illinois, first as a cook and finally working night shifts for the orthopedic unit.
Following graduation from the University of South Alabama, Angelo and his wife both worked at various travel assignments in hospitals across the country, winding up at Lahey Clinic near Boston, where he was made head of the MRI department. Angelo streamlined processes and improved the department’s financial performance by almost 2 million dollars annually, while simultaneously earning a dual master’s degrees in Healthcare Management and Business Administration.
In October of 2007 he accepted a position as Director of the Radiology Department at Centra Southside Community Hospital. Over the course of the past eight years he became director of multiple departments. In 2013 he became COO. This March, he was promoted to the CEO of Centra Southside Community Hospital and Vice President of Centra Health.
Though the gap between the traumatic events of his early years and his current leadership role may seem wide, Angelo has not lost sight of the feeling of being on the receiving end of hospital care.
"I remember when I was in a wheelchair, what it felt like to be a patient," says Angelo.
Those vivid memories are what drive Angelo's vision for Centra Southside Community Hospital: that every patient receives the best and most courteous care and that it is given with a smile. It is for that purpose that the hospital continues to aggressively recruit for primary care physicians; availability of care is at the top of the priority list for the new CEO.
“I'm personally working to ensure that our patients, as much as possible, don't have to leave here to seek care,” says Angelo. “So, if there's an opportunity to add a specialty, we will add it.”
Ensuring excellent health care close to the community mirrors Angelo's commitment to investing himself in the place he, his wife Kira and their three children now call home.
Ayden, 9, Ashton, 6, and youngest child Ava, who is 4, recently spent the day with their parents at the hospital's booth at the Heart of Virginia Festival.
“I put ‘em all to work,” he says with a smile.
(This story, highlighting Chamber Champion Centra Southside Community Hospital, was written on behalf of The Farmville Area Chamber of Commerce by Letterpress Communications.)
