Anthony V. Coletta, pioneering surgeon, innovative health-care executive, and longtime Haiti volunteer, has died at 70

Anthony V. Coletta, 70, of Radnor, pioneering surgeon at Bryn Mawr Hospital, innovative health-care executive at Independence Health Group and Holy Redeemer Health System, founder of Tandigm Health in 2014 and Crystallized Healthcare Solutions in 2023, longtime volunteer surgeon in Haiti, and venture partner, died Saturday, May 11, of a cardiac event at his home in Longport.

The son of a pathologist, Dr. Coletta knew as a boy that he wanted to be a doctor, too, and his friends in college called him Doc long before he earned his medical degree at Thomas Jefferson Medical School in 1979. He was an expert on early transplants and minimally invasive surgery, and worked as a trailblazing surgeon at Bryn Mawr Hospital from 1984 to 2005.

He was part of the 10-surgeon team at Jefferson University Hospital in 1984 that completed the area’s first liver transplant, and The Inquirer reported that he stayed all night with the patient after surgery. He performed the region’s first laparoscopic appendectomy, gallbladder operation, and colon resection in 1990, and used miniature video cameras and new long-handled tools to remove 18 inches of a cancerous colon from a 79-year-old woman in 1992. “We’re even amazing ourselves,” he told The Inquirer a month after that surgery.

He was innovative at medical administration, too, and he created accountable care organizations in the 1990s and thereafter that coordinated better patient care between doctors and health-care insurers. He left the operating room in 2004, earned a master’s degree in business administration at Temple University’s Fox School of Business in 2006, and served ever since as, among other roles, chief medical officer, senior vice president, president, chief executive officer, and chairman at Renaissance Health Alliance, the Surgery Center of the Main Line, Holy Redeemer, and Independence.

He established Crystallized Healthcare Solutions in 2023 and said on its website: “Crystallized HealthCare Solutions, I hope, will provide me a modest platform to share what I have learned through the years. The journey to transform health care is far from over.”

Gregarious and adept at connecting with people, Dr. Coletta made numerous informational videos, appeared on local radio programs, and spoke routinely at conferences and seminars around the country and in Europe and Asia. He made his first medical mission to Haiti in 2007 — “probably the most rewarding experience of them all,” he said in an online profile — and later founded Blue Sky Surgical Inc.

He returned to Haiti often with Blue Sky volunteers, especially after the devastating earthquake in 2010, and the daughter of one of his Haitian colleagues said in an online tribute: “He was an angel sent directly from Heaven. What he did for my family and my country will never be forgotten.”

Dr. Coletta was also associate clinical professor of surgery at Temple’s Lewis Katz School of Medicine and chief medical officer of the COVID-19 surge facility at Temple during the pandemic. He endowed the Coletta Family Scholarship Fund at Fox, was honored during its centennial celebration in 2018, and won Temple’s Generational Leader Award.

He was a fellow at the American College of Surgeons and a member of many boards. “His passion was helping those in need, making the world a better place, and providing access to health care for everyone,” his family said in a tribute.

Anthony Vincent Coletta was born Aug. 13, 1953, in Philadelphia. His family lived later in Penn Valley, and he graduated from Devon Preparatory School in 1971.

In a profile on the Fox website, he said he tagged along with his father to the hospital as often as he could. “I was probably a real nerd,” he said, “but that’s all I really wanted to do.”

He earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry at Georgetown University in 1975 and completed his surgery residency and fellowship in transplants at Jefferson Hospital in 1985.

He met Karen Linahan in Somers Point in 1975, and they married in 1977, and had daughter Maria and sons Anthony and Nick. They lived in Narberth, Penn Valley, Haverford, and Radnor, and spent long weekends and summers at their home in Longport.

Dr. Coletta liked to play golf at sunrise with his son Nick and host family and friends on excursions in his boat, the Floating Doc, and RV, the Rolling Doc. He biked and fished, cooked amazing Italian food, and reveled in the family’s memorable Sunday dinners.

» READ MORE: From Haiti, Dr. Coletta offers a different view of health care in the U.S.

He earned an alumni achievement award from Devon Prep and organized many of what his children called “the Coletta Family Adventures.” His son Nick said: “Life was just more fun, exciting, and manageable in his presence.”

He answered the question, what is the best advice anyone ever gave you, by saying on the Fox website: “Follow your heart.”

“He always wanted to do something to give back,” his wife said. His son Anthony said: “He was a special person.”

In addition to his wife and children, Dr. Coletta is survived by four grandsons, two brothers, three sisters, and other relatives.

Services were held May 17.

Donations in his name may be made to Blue Sky Surgical Inc., c/o Wisler Pearlstine LLP, Blue Bell Executive Campus, 460 Norristown Rd., Suite 110, Blue Bell, Pa. 19422.