Financial Services >> CEO Interviews >> July 22, 2014

Interview with the President and CEO: Physicians Realty Trust (DOC)

Thomas, John T.
John T. Thomas is President and Chief Executive Officer of Physicians Realty Trust (DOC) and has served on the company’s board of trustees since August 2013. From January 2009 to July 2012, Mr. Thomas was the Executive Vice President-Medical Facilities Group for Health Care REIT Inc. (HCN), where his group was responsible for growing total net investments for HCN’s medical facilities division, including hospitals, medical office buildings and life science research facilities, from $2.3 billion in assets to approximately $5 billion. Since August 2012, Mr. Thomas has been self-employed as a health care consultant and lawyer. He has relationships with over 25 national operators and health care delivery systems with whom he has worked to develop and acquire health care facilities. Prior to Health Care REIT Inc., Mr. Thomas served as President, Chief Development Officer and Business Counsel of Cirrus Health from August 2005 to December 2008, where he led efforts to acquire and manage four hospitals and an endoscopy center as well as efforts to develop other facilities. From October 2000 to July 2009, he served as Senior Vice President and General Counsel for Baylor Health Care System in Dallas, Texas. As General Counsel, he was responsible for legal affairs and government affairs. Mr. Thomas has been recognized for his team’s advocacy work on Texas H.B. 3 and Proposition 12, the 2003 Texas legislative and constitutional amendment efforts to increase patient access to physicians and care through reforms to Texas’ medical malpractice laws. He was also Co-Founder and Chairman of a national coalition to reform medical malpractice laws through federal legislation through the Coalition for Affordable and Reliable Health Care, CARH. Mr. Thomas has testified before the Ways and Means Committee, and Energy and Commerce Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, and a subcommittee of the U.S. Senate’s Homeland Security Committee, all related to health care policy. From April 1997 to October 2000, he served as General Counsel and Secretary for Unity Health System, a five-hospital division of the Sisters of Mercy Health System in St. Louis, Missouri, where he oversaw legal affairs for the health care delivery system and its operating subsidiaries. Mr. Thomas began his career as a tax lawyer at Milbank, Tweed, Hadley and McCloy in New York, New York, in 1990, and was elected a partner at Sonnenschein, Nath and Rosenthal — now SNR Denton — in April 1997. Mr. Thomas received his J.D. from Vanderbilt University Law School and his B.S. in economics from Jacksonville State University, where he was a scholarship letterman on the football team and was a member of the Academic All-Conference Team. He graduated with distinction and special honors in economics. Profile
TWST: Physicians Realty Trust is a relatively new REIT, having gone public just about a year ago. Please tell us a bit about how the company got started and why.

Mr. Thomas: Yes, we are