<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/6893d26c80093.image.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Lee Health President and CEO Dr. Larry Antonucci is retiring Sept. 30 after nearly a decade leading the Fort Myers-based healthcare system. Antonucci has served as president and CEO since 2017 and has worked for Lee Health since 2007.<\/p>\n
Brian Tietz<\/p>\n
As Dr. Larry Antonucci prepares to retire Sept. 30 after almost a decade as CEO of Lee Health,<\/a> he is looking back at the healthcare system\u2019s many challenges and achievements during his tenure \u2014 but is also looking ahead at the Southwest Florida healthcare landscape he has helped shape.\u00a0<\/p>\n Under his leadership, the Fort Myers-based system has grown significantly, from an operating budget of about $1.7 billion to almost $3 billion in the latest fiscal year. The latest figures show more than 16,000 employees across the system, making it the largest employer in Southwest Florida.\u00a0<\/p>\n Antonucci brought clinical experience to his role as CEO, having practiced obstetrics and gynecology in Lee County for 24 years before joining Lee Health in 2007 as chief administrative officer for Cape Coral Hospital. He served in several other roles with the system, including chief operating officer, before being named president and CEO in June 2017.\u00a0<\/p>\n Antonucci will be succeeded Oct. 1 as president and CEO by current COO Ben Spence,<\/a> who has served in a variety of roles at Lee Health since 1995.\u00a0<\/p>\n Lee Health President and CEO Dr. Larry Antonucci, center, introduces Ben Spence, left, the healthcare system’s current chief operating officer, who will succeed Antonucci on Oct. 1. They were joined by Lee Health’s Chief People Officer, Mike Wukitsch.<\/p>\n Therese McDevitt<\/p>\n Conversion was key to the future\u00a0<\/p>\n During his tenure, Antonucci led the Lee Health team through a global pandemic, major hurricanes and a major restructuring that he said has set the stage for the decades ahead.\u00a0<\/p>\n That restructuring came in late 2024, when Lee Health converted from a public health system to a private nonprofit. Antonucci said the change was necessary after Florida eliminated certificate-of-need requirements for general hospitals, exposing Lee Health to greater competition from for-profit providers.\u00a0<\/p>\n Even though it was a public system, Lee Health had no taxing authority, making commercially insured patients important to supporting its \u201csafety net\u201d responsibilities in the county, which require it to provide care regardless of a patient\u2019s ability to pay.\u00a0<\/p>\n The conversion made it possible for Lee Health to expand operations beyond Lee County and enter strategic partnerships and joint ventures designed to help make the system more competitive.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019s probably the most important thing that we\u2019ve accomplished in these last nine years to ensure that the system will be healthy into the future,\u201d Antonucci said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Since the conversion, Antonucci said, the system has opened a primary care practice in Collier County,<\/a> acquired Florida Heart Associates,<\/a> which is now a subsidiary of the Lee Health Heart Institute, and expanded its operations at Babcock Ranch.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe still have tremendous needs right here in Lee County, where we\u2019re building a $900 million new facility on Colonial Boulevard,\u201d he added. \u201cThere are still needs here, but now we have the flexibility to do more, and more things (yet to be announced) will be coming down the road.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Dr. Larry Antonucci, president and CEO of Lee Health, speaks during a groundbreaking ceremony for a new pediatric outpatient center in south Fort Myers.<\/p>\n Evan Williams<\/p>\n A look ahead\u00a0<\/p>\n In addition to managing major crises and restructuring, Antonucci has overseen significant growth across the system, including in cardiology, oncology, orthopedics and women\u2019s and children\u2019s health. That growth includes expanded pediatric cancer care at Golisano Children\u2019s Hospital.\u00a0<\/p>\n The system also has broken ground on new facilities across Lee County, including a new 53-acre Fort Myers medical campus with a capacity for 260 beds.\u00a0<\/p>\n But future growth \u2014 especially as the region\u2019s population continues to expand \u2014 is not necessarily about adding hospital beds, Antonucci said.\u00a0<\/p>\n In 2025, the system expanded its Hospital at Home program, providing hospital-level care to eligible patients in their homes, while also expanding outpatient services. Antonucci said the system invested about $12 million in equipment for the program.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt really is about access, and it\u2019s about the right care at the right place at the right time, and many times that\u2019s not inpatient care,\u201d he said. \u201cThe Hospital at Home program, our special complex care units where we can provide infusions and medications without people being in the hospital \u2014 that\u2019s where it is.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Antonucci also sees a transition away from \u201ctransactional care\u201d to \u201crelationship-based care,\u201d with a change in mindset about what care delivery systems look like.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re going to have to do things that health systems didn\u2019t do before,\u201d he said. \u201cThere are so many things that affect someone\u2019s health: their ability to commute, to travel to appointments, to get appointments. We\u2019re going to have to really embrace the patient from beginning to end and have a personal relationship that carries them through with seamless transitions.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe future of healthcare is going to look very different. I would anticipate the next five years we\u2019re going to see things you never imagined.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Leading through crisis\u00a0<\/p>\n Looking back, Antonucci said he is most proud of how everyone involved with Lee Health \u2014 from the board of directors to frontline staff \u2014 responded to crises including the global COVID-19 pandemic and Hurricane Ian.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWith the pandemic, we were dealing with a disease that we had never seen before, trying to navigate the clinical side of it, but also being a source of truth for the community,\u201d Antonucci said. \u201cI thought that was really important for us since there was so much misinformation out there. That\u2019s why I really tried to be out in the community as much as possible, to let people know what we knew \u2014 and just as important, what we didn\u2019t know.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n He recalled his pride in the Lee Health clinical team, many of whom slept in their garages because they were afraid to go into their homes for fear of spreading the disease.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAt one point, we had 600 people in the hospital with COVID who were very ill, and some people didn\u2019t survive,\u201d he recalled. \u201cWatching the team deal with that was really inspiring.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Just as the pandemic was winding down, Hurricane Ian struck in late September 2022, which Antonucci said also inspired pride in the Lee Health workforce.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWatching our team being completely isolated from their families, not even knowing if their houses were okay, if their families were okay, while they were in the hospital working, watching their cars float out of the parking lot \u2014 it just gave you an incredible amount of pride in this organization and the people here,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Dr. Larry Antonucci, who serves as the chair of the Florida Gulf Coast University Board of Trustees, poses for a photo with FGCU President Aysegul Timur during the September 2-3, 2026, Florida Board of Governors meeting, which was held at Florida Gulf Coast University.\u00a0<\/p>\n Florida Gulf Coast University<\/p>\n Antonucci\u2019s legacy\u00a0<\/p>\n While Antonucci won\u2019t be leading a major healthcare system after Sept. 30, colleagues and collaborators in the region predict that his impact will be felt for decades to come.\u00a0<\/p>\n Aysegul Timur, president of Florida Gulf Coast University, credits Antonucci with positioning Lee Health for the future without losing sight of the community it serves.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cDr. Antonucci spent his career caring for the people and families of Southwest Florida, and he set a tone that has helped position Lee Health and our region for what comes next,\u201d Timur said in a statement.\u00a0<\/p>\n She sees Antonucci \u2014 who serves on the FGCU board \u2014 as a bridge between the university and the healthcare system.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cHe sees our healthcare education partnership from every angle,\u201d she said. \u201cThat\u2019s what makes our connection so powerful. FGCU educates the workforce, Lee Health and other healthcare organizations provide opportunities for that workforce to grow and serve, and the entire community benefits.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cDr. Antonucci has been a central part of that full circle of impact.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Paul Hiltz, president and CEO of Naples Comprehensive Health, said in a statement that Antonucci\u2019s impact has extended well beyond Lee Health.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cDuring his tenure he guided his organization through periods of significant change, always with a clear commitment to patients and the communities of Southwest Florida,\u201d Hiltz\u2019s statement said. \u201cOn behalf of Naples Comprehensive Health, I thank Larry for his many years of service and for his friendship. I wish him all the best in his retirement.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lee Health President and CEO Dr. Larry Antonucci is retiring Sept. 30 after nearly a decade leading the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":407044,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[80777,209,211,210,161689,45736,2764,1521],"class_list":["post-407043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cape-coral","tag-ben-spence","tag-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral-headlines","tag-cape-coral-news","tag-healthcare-leadership","tag-larry-antonucci","tag-lee-health","tag-southwest-florida"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=407043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407043\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/407044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=407043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=407043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=407043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/6a280a75b9126.image.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/6a0605bb7887d.image.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/6ab17eb84364e.image.jpg\")
<\/p>\n