AdventHealth Medical Group is recruiting a hematology/oncology physician with a dedicated interest in genitourinary cancers to launch the medical oncology practice at the new AdventHealth Lake Nona campus in Orlando, Florida. The cancer center opens in mid-December 2026 as the ninth AdventHealth Cancer Institute location in the Central Florida Division. The campus is being built around men's health, and the GU medical oncology seat is intended to become the disease-site lead for that program.
This is a net new practice, not a replacement. The physician will open the practice alongside a breast-focused medical oncologist who starts the same month, with the full AdventHealth Cancer Institute network, tumor boards, clinical trial portfolio, and inpatient coverage model already in place behind the campus.
| Setting | Hospital-employed, outpatient clinic in the new Lake Nona cancer center with adjacent hospital |
| Focus | GU medical oncology, targeting 80 to 90 percent GU as the practice matures |
| Schedule | Monday through Friday, 8:00 am to 5:00 pm; 36 patient-facing hours plus 4 administrative hours per week |
| Inpatient | Consultative service; hospitalists admit. Weekday rounding alternates with the partner physician |
| Weekend Call | About 1 in 7, shared across five Orlando-area campuses with 2 physicians and 4 to 5 APPs |
| EMR | Epic, with Elsevier ClinicalPath integration |
| Guarantee | Two-year salary guarantee with uncapped production incentive |
| Position Type | New position, new practice |
Vipul Patel, MD, one of the highest-volume robotic prostatectomy surgeons in the world, is moving a large share of his surgical practice from AdventHealth Celebration to Lake Nona. His GU medical oncology referrals are currently spread across every AdventHealth oncologist in Orlando because no single physician can absorb the volume.
Lake Nona is the only AdventHealth medical oncology and infusion presence in southeast Orlando. The nearest AdventHealth cancer centers are Celebration and East Orlando, and patients from the Lake Nona area are currently traveling to those sites.
New patient wait times across the Institute's south market are running near 30 days against a 14-day internal goal. Demand is ahead of physician capacity.
AdventHealth Cancer Institute is moving from a general oncology model toward disease-site experts at every campus. Lake Nona is the first campus planned around subspecialty focus from day one.
| Component | Detail |
|---|---|
| Clinic hours | Monday through Friday, 8:00 am to 5:00 pm |
| Patient-facing time | 36 hours per week |
| Administrative time | 4 hours per week, which can be bundled into a half day when partner coverage allows |
| New patient visits | Up to 60 minutes during ramp-up, then 30 to 45 minutes |
| Established visits | 15 to 30 minutes |
| Target daily volume | 20 to 24 patients at full ramp |
| Weekday inpatient | Alternating weeks with the partner physician; typically an hour carved out of the clinic day for rounding and new consults |
| Weekend call | About 1 in 7 weekends, rotating with the Orlando physician pool |
New physicians in the AdventHealth Cancer Institute typically reach full clinic volume in six to eight months, and experienced physicians have done so in four to five. The two-year guarantee is designed to remove pressure during that window. The first week of employment is orientation; clinic opens in the second week alongside community introductions arranged by the physician liaison team.
Recent openings in the Institute set the pattern. The Apopka campus opened with one new fellowship graduate and needed a third physician within four years. Winter Garden required a third physician before its second had fully ramped. Dr. Patel's referral stream is expected to accelerate the Lake Nona timeline.
The physician reports clinically to Tarek Mekhail, MD, who leads medical oncology for AdventHealth Cancer Institute in the Central Florida Division and personally interviews every oncology candidate. Practice operations for the Lake Nona campus are managed by a dedicated Director of Practice Operations for the south market.
Dr. Mekhail's stated goal for this seat is a physician who becomes the GU disease expert for Lake Nona and grows into program leadership. The Institute has a record of moving quickly on that: the current breast program leader received the leadership title within a year of hire. Planned campus growth includes shell space for additional oncologists, a phase one research unit as an extension of the Celebration program within the next strategic planning cycle, and a hematology/oncology fellowship launching at the main campus in 2027.