Dr. Ralph de la Torre is the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Steward Health Care System LLC, New England’s largest community health care system, with eleven hospitals and multiple subsidiaries including a home health care company, a nursing college, an imaging company, and an insurance company. Steward’s rapid growth and fully integrated structure has received national recognition as a model for low-cost, high-value health care. Prior to founding Steward, Dr. de la Torre served as CEO of Caritas Christi, where he led a dramatic turnaround. In two years, Dr. de la Torre implemented changes in governance, operational structure, and strategy, leading to the creation of a regionally integrated community-based system with significant participation in risk contracting. Before joining Caritas, Dr. de la Torre was the 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 at Harvard Medical Faculty Physicians at BIDMC. 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 articles and been featured in multiple national media outlets. 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 of Harvard Medical School (M.D.) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.S.) in 1992.
CEO, Steward Health Care