- May 12, 2025
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Elizabeth Dosoretz knew there was a need for mental-health services in Southwest Florida. That’s what led her to open Elite DNA Behavioral Health in Fort Myers in 2013. But she took it a step further: she created a practice that accepted most insurances (including Medicaid and Medicare) and offered mental and behavioral health services, including psychiatry and psychotherapy, as well as additional services like occupational and speech therapy.
That was a rarity back then in the fragmented field.
“I knew there was a tremendous opportunity, because the more I questioned what was happening in the field, the more of an understanding I had that comprehensive care wasn’t the rule, it was more of the exception,” she says. “If we could do this and do it well, there are a lot of patients that need it.”
But the scale of that opportunity maybe wasn’t quite as clear at that point. What started out as one small office has grown to 35 locations across the state in 12 years. Recent growth includes new offices in Estero, Ruskin and Pensacola and expanded offices in Sarasota, Lehigh Acres and Cape Coral, with more to come in 2025. Dosoretz declines to disclose revenue figures.
“It’s been our steadfast focus to be provider- and patient-centric in every decision we make,” says Dosoretz, 45. “One of the many things that has shaped our approach is our ability to actually hear and listen to what patients and providers need and want. And we’ve been able to respond. Being in touch with what our clients need, what they want, and what actually would make them be successful has been probably one of the biggest factors in being able to continue to grow.”
“Don’t be afraid to try something or to fail or to innovate in a way that’s different,” she says. Dosoretz often finds herself saying, ‘That doesn’t sound right’ or ‘That doesn’t make sense.’ And when she has those thoughts, she’s quick to think outside of the proverbial box.
“You can try it, and you can always innovate and change or pivot if you need to,” she says. “But don’t be afraid to try what you think is better. Don’t be so rigid in your approach.”
Dosoretz reframes mistakes as challenges or opportunities, and there have been many along the way. “One of the challenges was underestimating how fast we needed to scale our infrastructure to meet demand,” she says. “Some of that happened with Covid and suddenly telehealth being a real opportunity. Suddenly behavioral health had to open our eyes to, ‘could we innovate and use virtual models?’”
Being nimble is another key. “With telehealth, we had to keep doing what we were doing, but we needed to do it a new way,” she says.
Reimbursements have been another major learning curve. Dosoretz thought there had to be an expert on reimbursements she could turn to for insight. “But over time I learned the answer isn’t in some book somewhere or with some person somewhere,” she says. “It’s a much more collaborative conversation. By making mistakes along the way, I learned ‘that person’ isn’t there. You have to ask questions and push the envelope a little to make the answer we need to hear or help them come up with it.”
Dosoretz admits she’s someone who’s “always looking to see what could go wrong. I never feel like we got to this point and now we’re great.”
So determining a tipping point for her business isn’t easy.
“If I had to say, it was probably when we had expanded into multiple locations and seen consistent patient and provider retention across all sites,” she says. “It wasn’t really about numbers; it was the moment we realized that our model is actually access, and we can create comprehensive behavioral health care centers across different markets that provide care beyond just our original little Fort Myers office.”
“Be patient,” says Dosoretz. “A system takes time to refine. And just because it’s not perfect or doing as well as you thought it would or doesn’t look exactly the way you want it on day 20, that doesn’t mean it’s not moving toward that. A process takes time, and there’s no way to skirt the time. It’s part of the process.”
It can also be very unpredictable, so don’t get distracted by every curve ball or bump. “Keep your eye on what matters,” she says. “Focus on the main thing even when there are distractions.”
Elite DNA Behavioral Health’s commitment to accept most insurances is its biggest threat. “When you’re dealing with different payers, it’s easy to get very frustrated,” says Dosoretz. “We have to make sure we are staying patient focused and grounded in what we’re here to do. It’s always a core principle of mine to make it easy for the patient, because they feel bad already.”
The core of the challenge is understanding the payer landscape, she says, and creating systems within it. “But we don’t want to pass the frustration or learning curve onto the patient,” she says. “That’s not fair. It’s a challenge staying ahead of what changes are happening in the landscape of reimbursement and policy and compliance, but the onus is on us.”
“The best part is definitely seeing the impact and knowing that every single decision we make and how we create our system has the opportunity to really help someone struggling with their mental health,” she says. “When we do something right, we know that it affects so many other pieces.”
But that also comes with tremendous responsibility. “Every single choice about how we do anything affects everything,” she says. “It affects our teams and patients and systems and families. It’s balancing knowing that what we do is that important and knowing that it’s not going to be right the first day and walking that line.”
