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Trendsetters - Healthcare - April 07
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Dean of Elder Care
As a child, Kelley Rice- Schild helped pass out medications at a Miami nursing home. As a teen, she volunteered. After high school, she worked in every department. She had her administrator's license when she was 21.
She was born to it. Her great-grandmother, Florence "Flori" Dean, founded the Floridean Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in 1944. Her grandfather was the first president of the Florida Health Care Association. Rice-Schild, 44, is a past president of the association and is one of only 15 members of the national American Health Care Association's elected board, where she speaks for independent owners like herself.
She is helping with a state association effort this legislative session to eliminate what operators see as redundant requirements. "I love the business, but I also like the advocacy part," she says.
At 60-bed Floridean, which she owns with her three siblings, revenue last year was $5 million, "and the expenses are right there with it." Hurricane insurance quadrupled in the last year.
A mother of three, Rice- Schild says it's too early to say whether her children or her nieces and nephews will carry on the business for a fifth generation. But all have been volunteers. "They all do the same thing I did."
Notables
› Cancer biologist Nisha M. Broodie, 23, University of Miami biology senior, won a Gilliam Fellowship from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, which provides underrepresented minorities with financial support toward a Ph.D. in the life sciences.
› Pioneering and award-winning emergency medicine doc Richard Slevinski, 58, president, Emergency Medicine Learning and Resource Center, is working to build in Orlando a $6-million home for the center with classrooms and simulation labs for training care providers from firefighters to doctors.