Staff

Meet The Team

The Lake Nona practice opens with two medical oncologists, each anchoring a disease site that matches the campus's surgical focus. Behind them sits the AdventHealth Cancer Institute's Central Florida group: roughly 30 medical oncologists and 45 advanced practice providers across nine locations who share tumor boards, call coverage, clinical pathways, and a single trial portfolio. The incoming physician joins that group, not a standalone clinic.

Lake Nona Medical Oncology Team at Opening

GU Oncology Leadership Across the Institute

The physician works day to day with the surgeon generating the campus's GU volume and is mentored by the Institute's GU medical oncology leaders at Celebration and Orlando.

Vipul Patel, MD, FACS

Medical Director, AdventHealth Global Robotics Institute, and Medical Director, AdventHealth Cancer Institute Urologic Oncology Program. Professor of Urology, UCF College of Medicine. Has personally performed more than 20,000 robotic prostatectomies, the highest volume of any surgeon in the world, and draws patients internationally. Splitting his surgical practice between Celebration and Lake Nona.

Guru Sonpavde, MD

Medical Director of Genitourinary Oncology, Medical Director of the Phase I Clinical Research Unit, and Christopher K. Glanz Chair for Bladder Cancer Research. Based at Celebration. Previously Bladder Cancer Director at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School. Approximately 500 publications. Designated clinical mentor for this position.

Carlos Alemany, MD

Breast and genitourinary medical oncologist at the Orlando main campus and leader of the Institute's clinical GU program. Cleveland Clinic trained. Recognized as one of the Best Doctors in America every year since 2009.

Tarek Mekhail, MD, MSc, FRCSI, FRCSEd

Leads medical oncology for AdventHealth Cancer Institute in the Central Florida Division and personally interviews every oncology candidate. Medical Director of the Thoracic Cancer Program and Associate Executive Director of the Cancer Institute. Cleveland Clinic trained; formerly Medical Director of the Lung Cancer Program there. Associate Professor, UCF. With AdventHealth 17 years.

Institute Composition

• About 30 medical oncologists in the Central Florida Division, with two more starting in the next two months
• About 45 APPs across inpatient and outpatient roles
• Nine cancer center locations once Lake Nona opens; Orlando is the flagship and Celebration the secondary hub, with most research concentrated at those two sites and Altamonte Springs
• A blended model: five physicians practice as true disease-site subspecialists today (breast, thoracic and head and neck, GI, GU), and the Institute is moving every campus toward one or two tumor-site focuses per physician
• Executive leadership includes an Executive Director for the Cancer Institute's Central Florida Division and separate Directors of Practice Operations for the north and south markets; Lake Nona falls under the south market director

Culture and Retention

Dr. Mekhail describes the group as one practice across nine campuses. Physicians at established sites route patients to newer campuses to help colleagues ramp, and physician-to-physician referrals within the group are routine.

• In 17 years, one physician has left the core Orlando group, and that departure was to leave clinical medicine
• No physician recruited to open a new campus has failed to build a practice. Apopka and Winter Garden both needed a third physician within a few years of opening
• The Celebration practice manager has been with the group nearly 30 years; the Celebration infusion director and pharmacy leads have been on site since it opened in 2018
• Physician lounges at every campus serve hot meals five days a week, with dictation workstations and 24/7 access. New campuses host physician lunches with the C-suite and CMO to connect new hires with the medical staff
• A physician liaison team of 12 handles community introductions for new physicians so that building referral relationships does not fall on the physician's clinic time

Interprofessional Structure

The Cancer Institute, the Medical Group, and the hospital campus operate as three partners. The Medical Group employs the physicians and runs the outpatient practice. The Institute owns infusion, radiation oncology, navigation, education, and long-range strategy including physician additions. The campus provides the inpatient setting. Decisions about adding physicians or expanding the Lake Nona program are made jointly across the three.