Saraspta Memorial Hospital in the distance as viewed from Sarasota Bay.
Florida-Bound
You never quite realize how large Florida is until you’ve driven the 900 miles (or so) from Key West—at the state’s southernmost tip—to its border with Alabama. That’s a lot of ground to cover if you are moving to Florida and trying to decide which part of the state makes the most sense for you.
More often than not, the choice boils down to the one area that possesses all the lifestyle amenities that attracted you to Florida in the first place.
Fortunately, if living near America’s perennially top-rated beaches has anything to do with your decision, then Florida shrinks to just an 80-mile strand of seashore stretching from Anna Maria Island to Boca Grande. It gets even smaller if first-rate cultural, educational and natural amenities are also a must. On these too, Southwest Florida is consistently rated at the top.
Still, if you are one of the many active retirees, empty nesters or young families who are making Florida the next chapter of your lives, the quality of an area’s healthcare system will no doubt figure prominently in where you ultimately decide to settle.
Quality Healthcare: Sarasota Memorial Hospital
So consider this: In a first-ever rating of the nation’s hospitals, only 2.2% of hospitals evaluated by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) earned the federal government’s highest 5-Star rating for overall quality and safety. That equates to only 102 of the 4,599 eligible institutions.
Of those, just two are in Florida; and Sarasota Memorial Hospital (SMH) is one of them. The other is Jacksonville’s Mayo Clinic, whose parent hospital in Minnesota received the highest ranking in the country.
CMS, the agency charged with overseeing the government’s Medicare and Medicaid programs, posted the ratings to its Hospital Compare consumer website in late July to make it easier for consumers to compare hospital quality. In the survey, each hospital received a rating of between one and five stars—five being highest—based on how well they perform on a range of inpatient and outpatient quality measures.
Sarasota Memorial Hospital earned the federal government’s highest 5-Star rating for overall quality and safety.
Days later, SMH was similarly cited for being one of only 63 hospitals nationwide to earn “high performing” ratings in all nine inpatient surgical procedures and chronic conditions evaluated in U.S. News’ 2016-17 “Best Hospitals” report.
As if these honors weren’t enough, in early July SMH received notification from the Florida Department of Health that it had successfully completed the rigorous process necessary to qualify as a Level II Trauma Center. Such a designation ensures that critically injured patients in Sarasota County can be transported to their local hospital rather than a trauma center in a distant community.
With its 5,000 employees, more than 900 physicians and 600-plus volunteers, Sarasota Memorial Hospital is at the forefront of healthcare along the Gulf Coast. Among its many components, the system includes its main campus near downtown Sarasota, six satellite health care centers in Manatee and Sarasota Counties, six urgent care centers, skilled nursing and rehab centers; and HealthFit, a medically-oriented fitness center that combines the very best in wellness with the expertise of one of the nation’s top hospitals.
Michael Saunders & Company salutes the healthcare professionals at SMH, as well as their leadership, for not only achieving these outstanding recognitions, but also for offering what is perhaps our community’s crowning lifestyle amenity—an exceptional, regionally-focused health care system.
With that said, here’s to your health!