Oct. 16, 2006

Media Contact: Kim Savage
Phone: (941) 917-6271
Pager: (941) 252-8101

$1 million Sudakoff grant helps bring new diagnostic & treatment options to local heart patients

The grant will help Sarasota Memorial purchase a new intravascular cardiac catheterization-electrophysiology system to help doctors better diagnose and treat irregular heartbeats and prevent heart attacks.

SARASOTA – The Roberta Leventhal Sudakoff Foundation awarded a $1 million grant to help Sarasota Memorial Health Care System acquire a new, cutting-edge cardiac catheterization-electrophysiology system.

Once installed, Siemen’s AXIOM Artis cardiac catheterization-electrophysiology system will not only expand Sarasota Memorial’s hospital-based cardiac catheterization-electrophysiology lab, allowing them to see 50 percent more patients each year, but also provide interventional cardiologists with new technology to better examine circulatory problems in the heart, kidneys and legs (cardiac catheterization) and diagnose and treat irregular heartbeats (electrophysiology).

“With the number of people at risk for heart attacks today, we feel compelled to do all we can to help expand the diagnostic and treatment options people can access to prevent a heart attack,” said Debra Jacobs, president of The Community Foundation, which administers the Sudakoff foundation grants. “As a public hospital, Sarasota Memorial has our respect and appreciation for its commitment to provide the most advanced medical care in the nation while maintaining its longtime mission as our community’s health care safety net.”

Sarasota Memorial is the only hospital south of St. Petersburg and north of Ft. Meyers with the specialists (Electrophysiology), equipment and facilities needed to diagnose and treat people experiencing irregular heart beats. While other institutions provide diagnostic services of the heart, they lack the specialists and facilities to diagnose and treat all cardiac abnormalities. They also fail to offer comprehensive programs for the uninsured and underinsured, often limiting care to profitable cardiac services. For example, many hospitals have stopped or scaled back the number of automatic cardiac defibrillators implanted into heart patients because the devices are very expensive and not adequately reimbursed by Medicare and insurance companies. Sarasota Memorial loses about $1 million a year implanting those devices. The health system does not make decisions based on profits, and short of heart transplants, provides a full range of cardiac care.

Heart disease remains the major reason for hospital admissions and number one cause of death in adults. The American Heart Association estimates that one in three adults have some form of heart disease.

Sarasota Memorial’s existing electrophysiology equipment – used to detect abnormal heart rhythms – is scheduled to capacity, causing delays in scheduling prescribed diagnostic and treatment procedures. The new system will allow Sarasota Memorial to increase capacity in the cardiac catheterization-EP lab by 50 percent, from roughly 1,000 people a year to about 1,500 per year.
On the electrophysiology side, we project that more than 85 percent of people who undergo an EP study for irregular heartbeats will be cured during their procedure, eliminating the need for maintenance medications.

On the cardiac catheterization side, most often used to diagnose and treat and blocked blood vessels, we project more than 95 percent will be treated in the cath lab; only a small percentage, less than 5 percent, will need cardiac surgery or further treatment.

Investing in advanced technology also helps our community attract and retain the nation’s most highly trained doctors. We have only two electrophysiologists in Sarasota County. We must continually invest in the best technology to attract and support that level of expertise.

We achieve that goal by reinvesting profits from high-performance programs such as cardiac care back into mission services, including our Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). The unit provides critical care for premature and at-risk newborns, generating more relief for parents than hospital revenue. Because of the high cost of care for critically ill infants, we are the only hospital in the region with a Level III NICU. More than half of the families with premature and at-risk newborns in our NICU lack adequate insurance coverage to pay for their babies’ hospital stay.

Indeed, Sarasota Memorial provides medical care to the majority of uninsured and underinsured people in our community, primarily through essential services that other hospitals have abandoned. For instance, the hospital now is the sole provider of obstetrical care in the county. It also is the only acute care hospital in the county that provides pediatric care and psychiatric care – services that surrounding for-profit hospitals have eliminated.

The system will allow Sarasota Memorial to provide a state-of-the-art testing environment that expands patients’ diagnostic and treatment options, replaces catheterization equipment that is nearing 10 years old and reduces capacity issues that result in scheduling delays. The system also will help attract and retain highly trained physician specialists searching for communities with hospitals that provide the latest technology to help diagnose and treat their patients.


About Sarasota Memorial
Sarasota Memorial Hospital is an 826-bed regional medical center. It has been listed by U.S. News & World Report in the nation’s 50 best hospitals in seven specialties: heart care and heart surgery, orthopedics, digestive disorders, cancer care, urology, geriatrics and ear, nose and throat care. U.S. News assessed care in more than 6,000 hospitals nationwide to determine the rankings. Just 176 hospitals scored high enough this year to rank in even a single specialty. The hospital also is the only hospital in the region with Magnet Nursing Services Recognition – the nation’s highest honor for excellence in nursing – and in 2005 ranked in the top 3 percent of hospitals in the nation for patient safety and top 5 percent for clinical excellence in Cardiac, Pulmonary, Obstetrics and Women’s Health.


####