Health Care
In nine short years, Bob Laskowski has reshaped Delaware health care. A 4:30 a.m. wake-up call starts each day for the low-key Christiana Care CEO. By Larry Nagengast | Photo by Tom Nutter
Early Rıser Bob Laskowski set out to become a doctor, not a hospital CEO. But his interest in seeing the big picture brought him to where he is today: president and CEO of Christiana Care Health System, the 17th largest in the nation when ranked by hospital admissions. “Medicine, taking care of people, was my first love,” says Laskowski, an internist specializing in geriatric medicine. “But I was always interested in the broader scope of health, its impact on groups in the community.” His eventual move to the management side of health care took him to the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business for an M.B.A., and eventually to the Lehigh Valley Hospital Health Network in Allentown, Pa., before he arrived at Christiana Care in 2003. In his nine years in Delaware, Laskowski, 59, has helped engineer the creation of the Delaware Health Sciences Alliance, an educational and research collaboration linking Christiana Care with the University of Delaware, Thomas Jefferson University and the Alfred I. du Pont Hospital for Children, and, despite perilous economic conditions, moved forward with the $210 million transformation of Wilmington Hospital. After weathering the recession, he is now focused on developing strategies to deliver more sophisticated care in a decade likely to be defined by the impact of federal health care reform legislation.
Delaware Business | Ma rc h / Ap r i l 2012
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