Q & A
MATT ZUINO
PRESIDENT AND CEO OF BAPTIST HEALTH
In January, Matt Zuino started his new role as president and CEO of Baptist Health. He succeeds Michael Mayo, who retired after about five years as CEO and more than four decades as a health care leader. Zuino originally joined Baptist Health in 2017 as president of physician integration before rising to COO in 2020. In an interview with Florida Trend, he shared his goals and strategies for the Jacksonville-based health system.
Florida Trend: What's your strategy for leading Baptist Health into its next chapter?
Zuino: For me, it's an opportunity to design the system we want to be. Part of that is stepping back and looking at our larger community. How do we, as a locally governed and headquartered system, evaluate those needs and ensure we're meeting them? My goal as CEO is for us to have a greater impact on more people, and I think the way we do that is to continue opening additional access. It is important for us to advance services we're doing, lean into the research component of it and advance our use of technology.
FT: What challenges do you anticipate?
Zuino: We've been addressing a lot of the headwinds that have come at us, including labor shortages, supply challenges and inflationary costs. We've done an incredible amount of work to ensure that we're investing into our team members. That's not just navigating wages and benefits but also continuing to develop our team. You have to be rehiring your employees each and every day. That work never ends. We're also a very highly regulated world, so we continue to navigate reimbursement rates. Some Medicaid enhancement programs we participate in are under scrutiny. That's always something we're mindful of.
FT: What 2026 projects are you most excited about?
Zuino: From a bricks-and-mortar perspective, one of our biggest projects is expanding and upgrading our emergency department on the Jacksonville campus. We have projects across communities, including additional freestanding EDs that are under discussion and development. With each, we create a point of access closer to the patients we serve. We're opening additional access for seniors in particular. We also continue to open primary care offices. With more focus on prevention and ongoing wellness, we reduce the number of needed interventions. That's a major initiative as we look at our population growth. There's so much demand. So, as we do better, it's actually opening up more access to people. — By Brittney J. Miller
Tampa General Hospital and Boston-based Mass General Brigham plan to open a 10,000-sq.-ft. cobranded and jointly owned radiation oncology center at Legacy Place in Palm Beach Gardens in 2026.