Luminary Award

Felice Loverso, PhD
President and CEO, Casa Colina, Inc.

With a first professional career as a practicing speech pathologist for 20 years, Dr. Loverso transitioned to health care administration and was brought to Pomona, California in 1998 to serve as the CEO and President at Casa Colina Centers for Rehabilitation. Successfully refocusing Casa Colina back to its core business of acute-hospital based rehabilitation, Dr. Loverso spearheaded rebuilding of the entire 20-acre campus of Casa Colina that is anchored by a state-of-the-art 68-bed hospital opened in 2005, and includes a diagnostic imaging center, an ambulatory surgery center, physician specialty clinics, and a medical office building. A 31 bed medical-surgical addition with three operating rooms and ICU was opened in April 2016. While this concludes the implementation of the strategic plan for expansion of primary service lines at Casa Colina, the organization continues to expand and evolve to accommodate the growing needs of the patient population.

Before coming to Casa Colina, Dr. Loverso worked at Braintree Hospital, outside Boston, Massachusetts for 10 years, serving as COO and CEO. He earned his MA in Speech Pathology and his PhD in Speech Pathology from the University of Colorado in Boulder, has published 33 articles in professional journals, and has served on the editorial boards of five journals. He has made more than 60 national and international presentations, and has been awarded five major grants as principal or co-investigator.

While serving as the Chairman of the Board of the American Medical Rehabilitation Providers Association (AMRPA), the national association of acute rehabilitation facilities, he was instrumental in developing a national web-based data system to monitor costs and outcomes of rehabilitation services and has been a leader in representing the interests of people with need for rehabilitation services before Congress and other governmental agencies. Through active participation in AMRPA, Dr. Loverso continues to champion the need for acute rehabilitation while responding to ongoing governmental challenges that threaten the future of access to this level of care for Medicare recipients and others. Dr. Loverso is also the current Chairman of the FAIR Fund, a national organization that raises awareness of, and builds support for, policies that will preserve and increase access to inpatient hospital rehabilitation.