One look at Dr. John M. Tedeschi’s lengthy resume, and it’s apparent that pediatric medicine isn’t just his career – it’s his life.

From his time as chief of pediatrics at Garden State Community Hospital (now VIRTUA-Marlton Division) throughout most of the 1970s and 80s and continuing to the present at VIRTUA-Voorhees Division, to president of the medical staff at VIRTUA Health System in the early 2000s, Dr. Tedeschi devoted his time, effort and energy to providing quality care to the people of New Jersey, whether it be as a compassionate doctor, an advocate of fellow physicians or a leader in the healthcare community.

A policyholder with Princeton Insurance since 1984, Dr. Tedeschi has been practicing pediatric medicine for almost 35 years and appears to embody perseverance in all that he does.

“To me, ‘perseverance’ is not a just a word, it’s a way of life,” said the native of Camden, NJ. “I’m the type of person who keeps going and going until the job is done.” He added that throughout most of his time as a pediatrician, Princeton Insurance has persevered with him as a trusted partner in quality healthcare.

“I’ve had a very positive relationship with Princeton Insurance,” said the doctor. “They’ve always been there for me, in the good times and the bad. If I’ve needed them for anything, they’ve been very responsive and tremendously positive.”

Two major achievements
While many of Dr. Tedeschi’s endeavors took great dedication, there are two, he said, that stand out in his mind for having required persistence and perseverance to see to fruition.

The first, he noted, was forming the Perinatal Cooperative in 1978.

This initiative regionalized maternal healthcare for all of South Jersey and consequently, the State of New Jersey. Dr. Tedeschi served as chairman of the board for ten years and continues as a board member.

“In the 70s, a hospital would try to take care of any baby, with any condition, whether they were prepared to or not,” explained the doctor. “So I got all of the hospitals in South Jersey (15 at the time) to sign a contract saying that if they weren’t well-equipped to treat an infant for a particular condition, they would transfer the infant to a hospital that was.”

The challenge in that, he said, aside from all the preliminary research, was essentially getting each hospital to acknowledge that its competitors could offer better care for an infant in certain situations.

“Today it’s going strong and has branched out to include pregnancy and post-pregnancy care, maternal nutrition and maternal depression,” said Dr. Tedeschi. “It soon became a nationwide model.”

No stranger to humble beginnings, Dr. Tedeschi remembers working alone toward forming the Perinatal Cooperative until he was ready to hire people to assist him. “When they asked me where I kept all of my data, I had to show them the filing system in the trunk of my car. That was the beginning of the organization.”

The second most important accomplishment listed on Dr. Tedeschi’s resume, he said, is the formation of Advocare.

Advocare, formerly known as Children's Health Associates, LLC, was founded in 1998 by Dr. Tedeschi, with ten practices and 33 pediatricians in the southern New Jersey area.

Today, Advocare is a widely recognized and prominent healthcare group.

“I was always very involved in healthcare delivery,” he said. “It was the late 90s when I was just loving my life – I loved taking care of children, I looked forward to getting up every morning, I loved my job, I had a very supportive family behind me. That’s when I started to notice that physicians were becoming more and more distressed.”

He explained that upon asking doctors what made them unhappy in their profession, he found that they shared the same issue: they wanted to be doctors, not business people.

“But healthcare was changing, and doctors were finding that they had to worry more and more about paying bills, making sure they were being paid right, hiring people, job evaluations, attaining and maintaining malpractice insurance, worrying about what services an insurance company will and won’t cover… it was all adding an extra burden to what’s already a difficult job.

“So I thought, ‘What if I took that all away? What if I could remove all the back-end work for these doctors, so that they can just focus on their patients and delivering quality healthcare?’”

By forming Advocare, that’s just what Dr. Tedeschi did.

“We make sure the doctors are kept up-to-date on the latest protocols, that they’re aware of any malpractice crises, and we’ve set up a triage system,” said the doctor. “We have many experienced nurses on-staff who take phone calls from patients at night and only call the doctors if it’s necessary.”

He said that this has led the doctors to become more content with their careers.

“Ultimately, the doctors are doing better in their practices and they are happier,” said Dr. Tedeschi. “They can spend all of their time focusing on patients and not the business side of the practice.”

Today, Advocare has close to 250 physician members. To what does Dr. Tedeschi attribute this growth?

“They came because they are frustrated,” he explained. “Not with medicine, but with the healthcare system in this country. They want to have a life and be a good doctor. They’re not trained to be MBAs – they’re trained to be doctors.”

He said it took “a number of years to get it together,” working with many top doctors to make sure they had all of the necessary tools and knowledge to deliver medicine properly and effectively before forming the group.

“We want to be more advanced and meet the unique needs of today’s patients,” said Dr. Tedeschi. “We want to give the best care possible.”

The motto of group, he said, is: “Quality, cost-effective medicine.”

“I think, through this group, we’re contributing something to the healthcare community,” he commented.

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