By Lois Thomson, South Florida Hospital News, for ACHE of South Florida

Ashley Abbondandolo is senior director of strategic growth and development for Memorial Healthcare System, but it’s not a position she was seeking when she started her career. Instead, her progression wound through several other paths until she arrived at this point nearly five years ago. “I started in the healthcare system in 2020 as the administrative fellow, and rotated to all six of our facilities. During that year I gained a lot of experiences that as a young leader I otherwise may not have had. So I started as an administrative fellow, and shortly after, I became a project manager in our corporate finance department, which was definitely somewhere I never thought I’d end up.”

For that reason, Abbondandolo states, “I always tell students when I talk with them, you never know what your path is going to be, just always be open to all sorts of opportunities that may arise. That’s how I ended up in this path of business development and physician relations.”

In describing her responsibilities, Abbondandolo said she leads the new centralized physician relations and business development structure for the Memorial Healthcare System, with her main role being to work with physicians affiliated with Memorial as well as those in the community. “Our team provides a way for physicians to make sure they have all of the resources in their toolkits to know what Memorial’s services are, and how we can work together to better care for their patients and the community.”

Her team accomplishes this by meeting with providers on a regular basis, listening to questions and learning about challenges they face. “We want them to be able to take care of their patients in the best possible way.”

She said the best part of their roles in physician relations is making sure that they’re working together across departments – with physicians and nursing, IT teams, imaging, etc. “There’s a lot of cross-departmental collaboration in our roles, which is something I’m passionate about because we can’t do this on our own. No one department can deliver healthcare on its own, so when I wake up every day, I know I’m going to work with so many different leaders and learn so much. There’s never a day when I’m not learning.”

In sharing her experiences with students, a considerable part of her interaction comes from mentoring young healthcare professionals within ACHE (American College of Healthcare Executives). “The best advice I can give is to always be open and say yes to opportunities that come along.” Abbondandolo joined the West Florida Chapter of ACHE as an intern when she previously lived in the Tampa area, and acknowledged, “From there I knew I would always be a member and be involved in ACHE.”

When Abbondandolo accepted the position with Memorial, and after joining the South Florida Chapter, she was invited to take a leadership role with Student Services on the Board; her response was “absolutely. I am very passionate about making sure the next generation of healthcare leaders has tools to be successful, and if I can help in any way, especially through this position on the board, I am all about it.”

She said the chapter does a variety of things for students, including holding a career fair, and hosting an annual case competition, where students are given a healthcare case, and they devise a solution to the case and a proposal. “We want to make sure they are successful and can accomplish what they see for themselves in the future.”

As with her position at Memorial, Abbondandolo appreciates the teamwork within ACHE. “Without ACHE I don’t think we as healthcare leaders could be as successful as we are. We collaborate, even if we don’t work in the same organization, we learn from each other. It’s a great networking opportunity.”