Coordinated Health’s Renaissance Man, CEO Dr. Emil DiIorio Story by Jadrian Klinger and Jen Merrill, Photography Jadrian Klinger
60 LEHIGH VALLEY Magazine JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2014
A
couldn’t do both. ...I was a shoulder surgeon. I started out doing knees, hips and shoulders, and by the end of my career, I was solely doing shoulders. My last month in practice, I operated on 68 shoulders.” DiIorio admits to missing his work as a surgeon, but he is kept plenty busy navigating as well as innovating solutions in the complex arena of health care in the U.S., which has compounded with recent legislation. Coordinated Health began as a single orthopedic practice, but has since grown into an integrated hospital network over the past 25 years, and with it, so has the complexity of health care. “If there’s one industry in America that needs disruption, it’s health care,” states DiIorio. “We must do it differently, and that’s what we are trying to do at Coordinated Health. We do this by narrowing our service lines and by reaching out to our patients in terms of accessibility. We can’t expect busy people to go to us; we have to go to them, hence the 16 locations. ...I’d like to disrupt the very concept that all health care needs to take place in large ‘towers,’ or tertiary-care centers. I feel very strongly, however, that tertiary-care centers are very important now and will be in the future because we are going to have an older and sicker population who will need that type of intensive care, but there is also a whole group of patients that just need basic things fixed.” Coordinated Health has continued to grow over the years and offers much more than the orthopedic services it did at the beginning – musculoskeletal, heart health, primary care and women’s health, among others. “We do not try to be everything to everybody,” he says, “which is very important because if you do try to do that, the effort to be value-based becomes very difficult. The word ‘value-based’ has been one that has been present in our vocabulary for a long time at Coordinated Health. What it means is getting rid of all the other stuff because it’s all about the customer, it’s all about the patient. At the end of the day, the patient’s satisfaction is the most critical.” For DiIorio, the patient has always come first in his medical career and remains the main focus of his work. A man of medicine, however, was not how he imagined his future when he was young.
long wide, bright hallways and modern, wellappointed waiting rooms, past receptionist desks and spa-similar hospital rooms, into high-tech operating rooms where joints are repaired by teams of surgeons and nurses, through open rehab-center expanses populated by patients and therapists sharing the toil toward regained wellness, Coordinated Health founder and CEO Dr. Emil DiIorio strides with the confidence reserved for those who own the place, which he does. DiIorio surveys the Lehigh Valley“”If there’s one industry in America based, 1,100-employeed, medical empire he created a quarter-century ago, noticing the smallest details that needs disruption, it’s health care. while absorbing the implications of the whole. It’s We must do it differently, clear he’s the boss, but there is not a single averted and that’s what we are trying to do employee eye, nor is there even a hurried feign of at Coordinated Health.” busyness. Only comfortable smiles and hellos greet DiIorio as he passes. And he responds in kind, knowing ~ Dr. Emil DiIorio well everyone’s name. These seemingly small gestures among his staff feel commonplace. It’s obvious he is not the average large company CEO. Rather, the rare quality of authentic leadership follows “I never wanted to be a doctor – never even thought it about as him through the centers of healing he built as he talks about the a kid,” he admits. importance of good bed-side manner, a notion and practice he Born in New York City, DiIorio says he enjoyed working with his knew well as an orthopedic surgeon who operated five days a week hands from an early age, which led him to studying engineering until a year and a half ago. at New York University. Right out of college, he earned a job as a “Eighteen months ago,” DiIorio, 66, explains, “I made the systems engineer for Grumman Aerospace Corporation, where he decision to run Coordinated Health fulltime because of the worked on the lunar module of the Apollo Space Program. obvious chaos of the complex health care world. I decided I After a short stint back at NYU in a graduate-level economics LEHIGHVALLEYMagazine.com 61
program, DiIorio then sold everything he owned and set off for Europe. He landed at the University of Ghent in Belgium to study anatomy, where he developed both a passion for art as well as medicine. He then moved to Antwerp, also in Belgium, to begin his medical studies. DiIorio returned stateside to complete his medical degree at Boston University. Then, soon after moving to the Lehigh Valley, he founded Coordinated Health. Beyond his work in the medical field, DiIorio is an accomplished painter and sculptor. But his passion for art does not manifest in mere dabbling nor that of a hobby. “I think art produces creativity and humanity, and you can’t build and lead health care organizations without a lot of both,” he says. “We are not building cars; we are taking care of human beings. …It is not a release from my day job – it’s all about getting closer to and connecting to humanity.” DiIorio’s primary art expression resides with the female form. “To me, the female form – just from an art standpoint – is the most difficult to capture in an abstract expressionist way. And then there’s the fact that everything – life – springs from the female. It is the essence of the world.” He adds, “My art has a foundation that begins with the Egyptians, makes it’s way to the Etruscans and then to some Italian artists from Tuscany. My art speaks of shape, form and color.” The term “Renaissance man” is one that often gets thrown around to describe a person who is adept at more than one discipline, practice or even hobby. But merely being poly-proficient in numerous subjects does not truly warrant this moniker. The ability to master multiple fields of practice, however, rightfully earns the designation, and DiIorio has done just that – as an engineer, businessman, artist, surgeon and leader in health care.
“I think art produces creativity and humanity, and you can’t build and lead health care organizations without a lot of both. We are not building cars; we are taking care of human beings.” ~ Dr. Emil DiIorio “I think I have been and remain one of the luckiest people in the world because very few of us have the ability to go through life and not only have a career and be successful – depending on how you define that – but also to have a cause. It’s not just about a financial statement. It’s a cause to make a difference in health care, even if it’s in one small corner of it.” DiIorio’s cause is health care, and those who make up the 11,000 patient visits a week at Coordinated Health benefit from what he created a quarter-century ago. 7
62 LEHIGH VALLEY Magazine JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2014