FHCI Board Chair Ed Gilbert brings direction via leadership skills to important role
Ed Gilbert has seen more than a dozen immediate family and close friends die from complications related to cancer. Two close friends are being treated at the Florida Hospital Cancer Institute (FHCI) for brain cancer and esophageal cancer.
So when he had the opportunity to chair the FHCI Board, Gilbert stepped up.
“I’m a real advocate of the program here,” said Gilbert, CEO of Absolute Thinking Inc., an Orlando-based full-service marketing company specializing in hospitality, real estate and retail. “With my passion for marketing and branding, we’ll continue to work on brand recognition for the institute across the southeast, while I devote a large percentage of my time to raise more money and fight this disease.”
David Collis, chief development officer for the Florida Hospital Foundation, said Gilbert “is passionate about fighting cancer through research, clinical trials, prevention and education. We’re pleased that Ed will champion Florida Hospital’s fundraising efforts to battle cancer in Central Florida and beyond.”
Rising to the Role
Gilbert’s path to championing Florida healthcare is rather circuitous. Born at Cedars of Lebanon (now the world famous Cedars Sinai) in Hollywood, Calif., he is the youngest of four children of Harry Gilbert, a women’s shoe salesman to the stars in Beverly Hills, and his wife, Felice, a nursery school director. When his maternal grandmother fell ill, the family relocated to his mother’s hometown of Norfolk, Va., to care for her during Gilbert’s childhood years. His father continued selling shoes while his mother opened a private school for children up to the sixth grade, which remains in business 54 years later. While he was earning a business degree from Old Dominion University, his oldest brother by 15 years was on track to become a law professor at Rutgers University, his sister was working as a U.S. government teacher in the northern Virginia school system, and his older brother was beginning the practice of law and would become one of the state’s most reputable medical malpractice/personal injury attorneys.
“All my siblings and I are ‘Type A’ personalities, which makes it interesting when we get together,” said Gilbert. “I was the jock in the family – football, baseball, wrestling and golf. I was very competitive in everything.”
Competitive, yet also quite adept at all undertakings, Gilbert penned a sports column for his high school newspaper and college journal.
The greatest surprise to his present-day colleagues might be that Gilbert was almost a rock star.
“In college, I was the lead singer in a band that got a record on the top 40 chart in our area in 1970,” he recalled. “I wanted to be a rock star; we were on local television and radio all the time. I was ready to quit school and pursue my dream. Next thing you know, I was graduating college and moving into the business world. Retail, then hospitality, and on into marketing for companies from mid-size to Fortune 500.”
In 1979, Gov. Bob Graham tapped Gilbert to be the youngest person to head the Florida Division of Tourism.
“That was my first experience in marketing healthcare,” he said. “I created a statewide medical referral program – the first in the country – to assist international visitors with language variations who needed medical treatment throughout the state. The 24-hour hot line assisted people in need of medical attention.”
In 1991, Gilbert created Gilbert Manjura Marketing, which became one of Central Florida’s 10 largest advertising agencies. In 2009, he established Absolute Thinking, one of the region’s 12 largest public relations firms and 22 largest advertising agencies. Through both companies, Gilbert has received more than 100 ADDY Awards for Creative Excellence and two EMMYs for Television Excellence. In 2006, he was inducted into the Florida Tourism Hall of Fame. He has served on the Visit Orlando Board for five years, twice chairing its global marketing committee.
Concerning his new role, Gilbert said that in the oncology profession, Florida Hospital is a leader already in this region, state and the southeast, with a great team of physicians, researchers and support staff in place.
“I felt it was time to give more back to my community in addition to my Visit Orlando volunteering,” said Gilbert. “It gives me a great sense of pride to spend my time helping others.”
The 2012 Agenda
Gilbert said Florida Hospital will spend 2012 making expansions undertaken in 2011 more efficient and better integrated into the overall system.
“That process started in 2011 but will accelerate,” he said. “The system needs to operate on clearly understood and shared values, common definitions of quality, with outcomes well communicated in our communities. This is a big task under the best of circumstances, but with all the changes taking place in healthcare, it’s even a greater challenge.”
For example, the hospital system is working with its physicians, nurses and support staff on changes required by the concept of value-based purchasing, said Gilbert.
“The hospital will be refining its implementation of clinical protocols, which have demonstrated the ability to reduce cost without compromising healthcare,” he said. “They will also refine their use of the CPOE (computerized physician order entry) to ensure that maximum utility is gained from this technology, including a safer healthcare environment. For those changes that are not yet required, they’re modeling their impact and analyzing the operational changes that may be necessary to implement them.”
When asked his thoughts on industry trends, healthcare reform, recommended changes, and ACO formations, Gilbert pointed out that, as industry leaders know, healthcare is becoming more and more accountable for cost and outcome.
“The countervailing trend is the significant downward direction of reimbursement,” he said. “Medicare and Medicaid are both reducing payment, even though neither really covers the actual cost of the care provided. This is just a hard reality of the downward trend in the economy related to Medicaid and the upward trend in the number of those on Medicare fueled by the Baby Boom. Further growing numbers of people have no insurance because they’re out of work and don’t qualify financially for Medicaid. We see a growing number of people who will be paid for by the government sector, Medicaid or Medicare, more reliance on tax district funding where that exists.”
Healthcare reform, at least in the short run, will exacerbate this problem, Gilbert emphasized.
“Companies are seriously contemplating not providing benefits or even dropping them as the penalty imposed is the less costly alternative,” he said. “This could easily drive employees into the expanded Medicaid Coverage or insurance that has the minimum mandated coverage. This will put tremendous pressure on the healthcare sector to be able to both meet demand and remain current beneficial treatment modalities and approaches. Each community has a different set of healthcare resources. The healthcare providers in those communities, once the operational parameters and outcomes are defined, can come together in unique ways to improve both efficiency and quality. The diversity of population and distribution of healthcare resources do not lend themselves to a uniform solution.”
Gilbert and his wife of 28 years, Connie, have a daughter, who is an actress in New York City.
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