by John McGuire
Sun Life Health is a nonprofit community health center founded in Pinal County in 1976 that has become one of the largest providers of primary care in the area, serving more than 48,000 patients every year.
But its growth has not erased the health care provider shortage that affects this and nearly every other part of the country.
Sun Life hopes to help turn the tide by offering more medical-centered education through physician residencies and other training programs out of a planned four-story Casa Grande clinic that will consolidate most of Sun Life’s services in the city and add classroom space.
The push is being led by CEO Dr. Eddie Estrada, who underwent his medical training in his native Puerto Rico and ran a successful practice in the Midwest before coming to Casa Grande 17 years ago.
Grande LIVING: It looks like you were educated in Puerto Rico. Is that where you were born?
Dr. Eddie Estrada: I was born, raised and educated in Puerto Rico. I’m pretty proud to say I had all my education to 12th grade in the public school system. Then I moved to the University of Puerto Rico for my bachelor’s degree in science, and then I moved to the medical school and then the University District Hospital, where I did my specialty as an OB-GYN.
Grande LIVING: What made you decide to go into medicine?
Dr. Eddie Estrada: When I was 13 years old, my grandmother died from Hodgkin’s disease. At that time in 1975, there was no cure. My grandparents were very influential on me. And so I said, “I’m going to go to school to find a cure.”
Later, I was taking a cancer class where they said that the cure had been discovered. I switched gears then to become an OB-GYN, because if I’m not going to be there at the end of life, I’m going to be at the beginning.
I finished medical school in 1987 and completed my ob/gyn residency in 1991. After that I bought a practice in Tiffin, Ohio. I arrived to this community, which is south of Sandusky by Lake Erie, and I worked there for 17 years.
Grande LIVING: Did you grow the practice during that time?
Dr. Eddie Estrada: Yes, we introduced a lot of new technology. In 1993, I did the first minimally invasive hysterectomy via laparoscopic procedure. I was instrumental in bringing a new hospital, about an $80 million hospital, into town.
What’s interesting about that, we cut the ribbon and two weeks later I left, in 2007. If you remember the economic implosion at that time — when I arrived in 1991, there were about 40,000 people in town. And when I left, there were 12,000 people. The National Machinery and Whirlpool factories there had been shut down. So we lost all of that and that is when I came here.
Grande LIVING: What made you decide to come here? In Casa Grande, we suffered during that same time period. How did you get to Sun Life?
Dr. Eddie Estrada: I put my CV on the market, and I received a phone call from (then-Sun Life CEO) Travis Robinette, and we had a conversation about the needs they had in terms of growing the OB-GYN component at Sun Life. I traveled here on Aug. 26, 2007.
There was a monsoon over here and it was 120 degrees and I could feel the sand in my mouth, but I had the opportunity to evaluate Sun Life as a business, and the hospital and the services they were offering. I thought, “Wow, I mean here we can still grow and develop this business.”
I was hired as an OB-GYN with an extra title of chair of OB-GYN. We had a couple of other providers in that specialty at the time.
We had about six offices. And as soon as the city started booming we started developing the family medicine more. We started growing and developing and we’re now at 14 offices.
Grande LIVING: So was your next role with Sun Life as CEO?
Dr. Eddie Estrada: When I arrived, I never thought I was going to be a CEO. I came over here to finish delivering 4,000 babies by the time I retired, I made it to about 3,000.
But based on the need and the growth and the business experience, from being chair from 2007 until about 2015-16, I became the director of OB-GYN. We had already three or four offices and it started growing so fast, all the changes that were happening; Obamacare came on board, I saw the need of transforming Sun Life, and then I applied for the position as chief medical officer.
I was CMO from 2016 until 2021. Travis mentored me, but he also believed in me. He’s a great individual, great leader. When COVID-19 hit, I prepared a chair for him for the emergency. “This is your chair, boss, to sit there.” He says, “No, you’re going to run the company from there.”
And we did, and the team worked together in a way that was so unbelievable that I got convinced to hang up the gloves and become the CEO. And that’s the best decision I ever made.
Grande LIVING: Most of our readers are going to be familiar with Sun Life, but let’s talk for a couple of minutes on what is Sun Life’s mission, how big is it now, those things.
Dr. Eddie Estrada: Our mission, and what I tell everybody, is Sun Life is to become the oasis in the middle of the desert for health care, education and wellness. We are here to help individuals who are in need of health care.
I believe we are well prepared for the future requirements and regulations that the government and insurances are throwing at healthcare organizations.
Right now we have 14 offices and the latest number is 460 employees. In 2007, we were 119 employees with just six offices, we have come a long way!
Grande LIVING: And have you done any growth since you’ve been CEO or just coming out of the COVID era?
Dr. Eddie Estrada: Coming out of COVID, we were at about 360 employees and we are 460 now.
As far as where our offices are, we cover Pinal and Maricopa counties. In the south we have offices at San Manuel and Oracle. As we move to the north we have Florence, Eloy, Coolidge and five here in Casa Grande, which is our base.
Moving north we have two offices in Maricopa and one each in Mesa and Chandler. And we cover two hospitals, Banner here in Casa Grande and Banner Ocotillo in Chandler. We offer additional services in Casa Grande under one roof, such as, Pediatric Dental, General Dentistry, Primary Care, Pharmacy and Mammography.
Grande LIVING: What is a typical day for you? Do you go visit all these clinics? Do you have to lobby in the federal setting?
Dr. Eddie Estrada: For me, it starts about five o’clock in the morning when I get up and I get to the office 7:30-8, depending on the needs. I have to say emails are something that takes a lot of time.
But I come from doing the groundwork, so I work hand-in-hand with everybody. One of the most difficult things for me has been to learn to delegate.
I spend a lot of time with the teams and having meetings at all levels from the chiefs all the way down to the medical assistants to the front office. We visit the offices regularly, and I want to know about the people who are seeing the patients, who are spending time with the patients, what’s working, what’s not working, how I can help.
Grande LIVING: Do you see patients anymore?
Dr. Eddie Estrada: I assist with surgeries and maintain the supervision of providers over there, and I help them with quality, peer review, doing the minutes for surgeries. I keep my boards, my licenses and all the requirements. Lots of continuing education.
Grande LIVING: Which brings us to kind of the focus of this issue of our magazine this time, education in general, and my understanding is Sun Life is about to make its next big expansion in Casa Grande and that will have an educational component.
Dr. Eddie Estrada: I would say since the very beginning when I arrived here, the opportunity was there, but we were very limited because not every provider is an educator. As we continued growing, that was injected into the culture of Sun Life.
We have also been working with multiple schools to bring medical assistant, nurse practitioner, physician assistant, pharmacist and dental students to our facilities, also increasing internal training programs for medical and dental assistants.
At the present time, the amount of providers available in the nation is not enough to take care of the population that we have in the United States, as well as locally. One of the problems we have is bringing physicians to the rural areas. The vision is to develop the programs here with the medical schools and the residency programs and develop those individuals here so they stay with us.
Grande LIVING: And how is that going to happen? The obvious visual impact for the city and our readers is going to be this beautiful new four-story campus that’s going to be built across from your current Sun Life Plaza. And right in the heart of a lot of other development that’s going on right now in that same corner. What is Sun Life going to be bringing with that?
Dr. Eddie Estrada: We’re going to integrate all the basic services that we have in town in one place. It’ll be four stories, and the top floor will be dedicated for family medicine, but also educational purposes. But we’re going to have all the services, family medicine, OB-GYN, pediatrics, pharmacy, X-rays, mammography.
Technology is a very fundamental component to be able to do this. That’s going to be a one-stop shop. We’re not going to have disseminated offices, it’s going to be just in one place.
Grande LIVING: And this will still be in the same partnerships that you already have with the local trade organizations, the hospitals, the high schools, the colleges, all those. You’re hoping this enhances those partnerships and gives you and them both the ability to, in the end, bring more providers at every level to the community.
Dr. Eddie Estrada: That’s the eventual goal. And what we have to do is to expose these providers to Casa Grande and the surrounding area, and the great opportunities here.
Believe me, from the point of view of medicine, there are plenty of pathologies right here. They’re not going to be bored, and there’s no need for the patient to jump in a car and drive 50, 60 miles, whatever, to get the services they’re looking for.
And we need additional space because some of the programs we need to train these future health care workers require educational space we wouldn’t have if we didn’t have this new building coming. For medical residency programs, you have to have so much clinical space dedicated to the program. You have to have so many classrooms dedicated to the program, and so forth.
Family medicine is basic and fundamental for us and, yes, we will facilitate for specialists to come over. That’s something that we have to work on together.
My message to the public is that medicine is changing to something that we call value-based. We are now data-driven to metrics and quality metrics so we can show the government, insurance companies and everybody that we are competitive and the health care that we deliver is high-quality.
Grande LIVING: And it’s not only a doctor’s office. It’s something that you can teach and attract and keep a high level of morale in the employees because they’ll have a nice new place. So we’re looking forward to that.
Dr. Eddie Estrada: For years and years, health care organizations have been centralized, where the top make the decision and tell the people how to do the job. I don’t believe in that. Coming from the bottom up, we know our job. So we design our processes, and then we tell the boss, “Hey boss, this is the best way of doing it. This is the data to prove it. What do you think?” He says, “Go for it. Do it. Prove it.”
Grande LIVING: What is the timeline for the structure? Are you in the final stages before construction? I know you’ve got approvals of the plan.
Dr. Eddie Estrada: Well at this stage we should break ground this summer.
Grande LIVING: So by the end of 2024, would we hope to have some construction beginning?
Dr. Eddie Estrada: I hope sooner than that.
Grande LIVING: What else do you want to make sure the public knows about Dr. Estrada and your goals for Sun Life? What do you have left?
Dr. Eddie Estrada: First of all, we are here for everybody, and that’s what I love about the organization. When I arrived, there was no limit for me to be able to serve anyone that walks through that door and serve them with high quality care.
And my promise to the community it that we will continue to do that and we hope everyone has the opportunity to experience the new Sun Life campus.
I would like the people to know that Sun Life has been here for 48 years and is now better than ever. And when I retire, I expect Sun Life to be one of the largest community health centers, at least in the state of Arizona.
