By Vanessa Orr
KIDZ Medical Services, a South Florida multispecialty practice that cares for neonatal, pediatric and women’s health patients across 15 office locations and 19 hospital partner sites, has been on an upward trajectory for the past few years, and 2024 was no different. In the past year, the practice took part in nearly 130,000 patient encounters and has remained financially strong while also expanding a number of services.
“It’s been a fairly stable period,” said CEO Wayne Brackin. “While there’s no doubt that margins continue to become tighter over time and require never-ending negotiations with managed care companies to provide very high-quality services in areas where there are fewer options, we are cautiously optimistic that we will continue to have solid financial projections, in part because of the efforts of our incredible CFO, Lindsay Mendiola.”
Legislative changes focused on Level 3 neonatal ICU requirements created the opportunity for KIDZ Medical to provide telemedicine coverage to facilities all across South Florida, and may also enable them to expand these services across the country.
“The new legislation requires hospitals with Level 3 NICUs to have certain pediatric specialty care available, but typically, in most of these hospitals, there is not a strong pediatric specialty presence,” explained Brackin. “Hospitals that primarily serve adults but also have strong ob/gyn Level 3 nurseries now need to provide cardiology, pulmonary/hematology, oncology and other types of care.”
As a result, KIDZ Medical has received inquiries from hospitals as far away as Colorado and Texas to provide telemedicine services in those areas. Brackin notes that it would be fairly easy to expand its telemedicine program, as KIDZ Medical has already been providing telemedicine services for pediatric services for a number of years in the Caribbean. The company has already contracted with five new hospitals to provide this type of coverage, and is also partnering with Nicklaus Children’s Hospital to augment the care that they provide to other hospitals.
“We’ve already been providing this service ‘in reverse,’ as one of our pediatric neurologists recently relocated out of state and has been providing neurology coverage in Florida through the telemedicine program,” added Brackin.
In 2024, KIDZ Medical established new emergency preparedness and disaster recovery protocols, which is especially important as the decentralized company serves patients in 30 locations across six counties equaling a 150-mile circumference. The company challenged its management interns from George Washington University and the University of Miami to help it implement a communications system during disasters, principally hurricanes, that would allow it to simultaneously communicate emergency information to all of its 500 employees.
“When you work within the same four walls, it’s relatively easy to communicate and implement plans and emergency response,” said Brackin. “But it gets a lot more difficult to keep everyone in sync when they’re not in the same place. We’re very happy to now have a system that allows us to stay in sync with our hospital partners and to be able to communicate with everyone over this large geographic expanse we occupy.”
KIDZ Medical also launched its MOMZ ob/gyn practice at Homestead Hospital with Dr. Dawn George to respond to the area’s growing population.
“Housing has become such a difficult issue in Miami, it’s significantly more affordable to live in southern Miami-Dade County where a lot of new housing has been built,” said Brackin. “As young families move down south, the area’s population has grown younger and the demand for ob/gyn services has skyrocketed. We opened that practice with one physician and subsequently added two, and have now doubled the size of the space to accommodate the demand.”
KIDZ Medical’s air ambulance service has also gotten busier in the past six months and most recently moved a patient from HCA Kendall to their home in St. Croix, Virgin Islands, and brought a 35-week premature baby from Panama to be treated at Nicklaus Children’s Hospital. The company is currently in discussions with an international insurance company to provide air ambulance services and is also negotiating with two other hospitals to provide NICU air ambulance coverage.
On the employee front, KIDZ Medical was invited to participate in the Best Places to Work competition that requires a minimum threshold of employees to respond to a survey.
“Employee response has been exceptionally strong, so fingers crossed that we do well in that competition,” said Brackin. He added that he is especially proud to note that a number of KIDZ Medical doctors have recently earned accolades, including Dr. Sara Tano, who received the St. Mary’s Hospital Faculty of the Year Award and Dr. Jessica Morlok-Prince, who was named Pediatric Attending of the Year in the 2024 FAU Emergency Medicine Residency Program. MOMZ ob/gyn physician, Dr. Darren Salinger, was named Preceptor of the Year by the Miami Dade College Physician Assistant Program.
As 2025 approaches, Brackin says that KIDZ Medical is ready for whatever lies ahead.
“Obviously, there is a great deal of uncertainty about the direction that healthcare is going to go in, but that’s not anything different; healthcare goes in five-year cycles, and there’s always something new coming down the pike,” he said. “We’ll stand back a little bit, and then react to whatever changes come.”
