DARA SANCHEZ DE PLACER

Co-Founder and CEO | Florida Spine & Pain Institute

In its earliest days, Florida Spine & Pain Institute had no staff or roadmap: only a vision, deep conviction, and a willingness to outwork uncertainty.

For Dara Sanchez de Placer, the decision to build the company was not driven by ambition alone, but by a desire to create a better quality of life for her family. At the time, she and her husband, Dr. Javier Placer, were raising three young children while he worked long, demanding hours, leaving little room for the life they had envisioned together.

Founded in 2013, Florida Spine & Pain Institute began as a single-operator endeavor, built from the ground up through Dara’s hands-on leadership. She oversaw every aspect of the business—establishing its operational framework, developing systems and protocols, and building relationships with skilled nursing facilities across Central Florida that became the foundation for growth. From the beginning, she created a structure that allowed clinical excellence and business leadership to operate independently. With that groundwork in place, Dr. Placer—while maintaining his position at another practice—began seeing patients part-time during evenings and weekends, generating the initial revenue to support the business.

Though her academic background includes psychology, a law degree, and a master’s degree from Harvard University, Dara felt called in a different direction. “I realized my calling wasn’t to practice law—it was to build,” she says. Without formal business training, she immersed herself in every aspect of operations, developing a disciplined approach to growth. Rather than taking profits, she reinvested into the business—expanding services, hiring providers, and outsourcing specialized functions to build a scalable infrastructure.

The practice initially operated within skilled nursing facilities, where Dr. Placer and Dara identified a critical gap in physiatry and pain management continuity of care after discharge. Dara reinvested revenue to expand into outpatient care, leading to the acquisition of the company’s first clinic in Clermont.

When Dr. Placer joined the outpatient practice full-time in 2021, demand accelerated. Dara responded by implementing systems and training to support growth without compromising quality.

Today, Dara directs the operations of four clinics, supporting more than thirty skilled nursing and assisted living facilities across Central Florida. “We are the only company in Florida offering services in both the skilled nursing and assisted facility setting and continuing pain management and physiatry care at the outpatient clinics.”

She believes private practice medicine can thrive when approached with discipline and strategy. “You can be the best physician in your field,” she says, “but at the end of the day, it is still a business.” Sustainable growth requires looking beyond the exam room—building a long-term enterprise through reinvestment, real estate strategy, and strong tenant partnerships.

Beyond the business, Dara is deeply committed to giving back. She leads her father’s nonprofit in Puerto Rico, La Fondita Divino Niño de Jesús, and, through Florida Spine & Pain Institute, helped establish a sister kitchen in Kenya serving more than 500 orphans, as well as children from Celebration School and a local vocational school.

“I’ve learned that building something meaningful requires more than vision and hard work—it demands discernment, structure, and the discipline to protect what you create. If I could offer one piece of advice to women starting a business, it would be this: find your passion. I began this journey seeking a better quality of life, but that alone was not enough to carry me day to day.

What gave me the strength to keep going was my purpose—the impact my work had on others. That purpose is what carries you through the demands, the uncertainty, and the challenges of building something that lasts.”

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