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Economic Backbone - Health Care
Florida's best-ranked hospitals -- and more health care briefs from around the state
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services created a ranking system to help consumers make informed choices about where to go for health care. The system assesses 27 quality measures related to both process of care and health outcomes — including infection rates and readmission rates after surgery and various events like heart attacks. Acute care hospitals are ranked from one to five stars, with five stars being the highest. In the most recent rankings, five hospitals in Florida earned five stars:
- Doctors Hospital of Sarasota
- Gulf Breeze Hospital in Gulf Breeze (Santa Rosa County)
- Mariners Hospital in Tavernier (Monroe County)
- Naples Community Hospital
- Sarasota Memorial Hospital
Detailed information and rankings for all hospitals in Florida are available at medicare.gov/hospitalcompare/search.html.
Overseas Patients
Efforts to attract patients from overseas pay off .
The Greater Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau’s dedicated medical tourism section on its website, launched about five years ago, touts services provided by Baptist Health South Florida’s Miami Cancer Institute, the University of Miami Health System, Mount Sinai group and other Miami medical providers.
“Our strength as a leisure destination is a great foundation for us in medical tourism,” says Visitors Bureau COO Rolando Aedo.
Non-profit Baptist, the group that attracts the most medical tourists to the area, now receives some 12,000 patients yearly from abroad, especially for cancer, cardiovascular, neurological and orthopedic care. That’s up about 30% to 40% in some specialty areas from just five years ago, says Dr. Mario A. Mendez, who runs Baptist’s international unit.
More overseas patients come because of new health-care offerings, including proton therapy at Baptist’s cancer institute. Plus, Latin America’s expanding middle class now is buying commercial health insurance that covers overseas care, “making visits to the U.S. and Miami more accessible,” Mendez says.
Those patients help hospital finances because private insurers tend to reimburse more generously for treatment than government plans such as Medicare, he says. — Doreen Hemlock
Simulation Training
At the University of Miami’s five-story Simulation Hospital, which opened in 2017, students and professionals from around the world learn and practice technical skills, clinical decisionmaking, emotional response capacity, teamwork and communications. In addition, medical professionals train there for mass shootings, hurricanes and disease pandemics.
The hospital is the only one of its kind in South Florida and is among the world’s largest. It has a functioning emergency department, operating room suite, medical/surgical suite, neonatal and pediatric intensive care unit, outpatient clinic and more.
UHealth Renovations
UHealth Tower, the main hospital facility for the University of Miami Health System, is undergoing renovations, including:
- 17 new operating rooms — 15 of which will be housed in a fivestory addition
- 5 new cardiac catheterization labs
- 2 new hybrid rooms for cardiac procedures
- 22,000 square feet of new clinic space
- 2 refurbished floors within the hospital to provide more modern patient rooms and amenities
Acquisition
â-º Baptist Health South Florida’s Miami Cardiac & Vascular Institute purchased the county’s largest cardiology practice, HeartWell, earlier this year. HeartWell’s 24 physicians and six practice locations became part of the institute.
