Founder, Chairman and CEO
Steward Health Care System
Dr. Ralph de la Torre is the Founder, Chairman and CEO of Steward Health Care Systems LLC. Steward is the largest private hospital operator in the United States and a national leader in implementing a new, integrated model of health care delivery that keeps patients healthy and close to home. Prior to founding Steward, Dr. de la Torre was CEO of Caritas Christi Health Care, where he led the transformation of a six hospital system.
Previously, Dr. de la Torre was founder and CEO of the Cardiovascular Institute at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and of Cardiovascular Management Associates, one of the nation's first totally integrated systems for treating cardiac patients. At the same time Dr. de la Torre was Chief of Cardiac Surgery at BIDMC and a Harvard Medical Faculty Physician at BIDMC -- he is widely recognized as one of the top cardiac surgeons in the nation.
He has founded several health care-related businesses and has numerous issued or pending patents. A frequent commentator on national health care policy issues, Dr. de la Torre has bylined and/or been featured in BusinessWeek, Fortune, CNBC and Fox Business, among others. He was recently voted one of the 25 most powerful physician executives in the United States by Modern Healthcare magazine. Dr. de la Torre graduated from Duke University in 1988 (B.S.E.), where he was a member of Phi Beta Kappa and Tau Beta Pi, and from a joint program between Harvard Medical School (M.D.) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.S.) in 1992.