As longtime partners in education, healthcare, wellness, community engagement and more, Lee Health and Florida SouthWestern State College (FSW) have entered into a letter of intent to further grow the partnership and create new opportunities for students in our region.

Through the collaborative relationship, Lee Health and FSW plan to develop several initiatives designed to benefit students, Lee Health team members and the Southwest Florida community.
 
Lee Health and FSW will create different learning programs and internships for FSW students that will prepare them for potential job opportunities within Lee Health and provide a pipeline of highly qualified and trained employees to serve Southwest Florida.
 
Additionally, Lee Health and FSW will develop programs to engage Lee Health staff in the activities of the college, along with continuing to provide support to current and future FSW School of Health Professions programs, including nursing, respiratory care, cardiopulmonary sciences, radiologic technology and more.
 
Lee Health is currently the largest employer of graduates from the FSW School of Health Professions in the areas of nursing, EMT, respiratory care and other programs.
 

Through the partnership, Lee Health and FSW will continue to support undergraduate studies of nursing and a variety of clinical specialties offered by FSW as a primary clinical site for training.



Palm Beach Gardens Medical Center appoints Jennifer Scott to the role of emergency department director. Scott has over 20 years of nursing experience, and was most recently director of the telemetry and stepdown nursing units. She oversaw a 55 bed-unit for post-op and stepdown patients.

Scott started her career at Palm Beach Gardens Medical Center, working as a nurse in the cardiovascular intensive care unit and then moving to the emergency room, before leaving for a new opportunity at an area South Florida hospital. She then returned to Palm Beach Gardens Medical Center as director of the telemetry and stepdown unit. Scott has a bachelor’s of science degree in nursing from Western Governor’s University.


Holy Cross Health is now offering a new miniaturized, wireless monitoring sensor to manage heart failure. The Abbott CardioMEMS™ HF System is the first and only FDA-approved heart failure monitoring device that has been clinically proven to significantly reduce hospital admissions when used by physicians to manage heart failure.

Heart failure is the leading cause of hospitalization for Americans over age 65. The device allows patients to remotely share daily sensor readings from their homes to their health care providers, allowing for personalized care to reduce the likelihood of hospitalization. Innovative telehealth, like the CardioMEMS HF System, reduces the need for in-person appointments. Data from a recent clinical trial found that the remote monitoring technology reduces heart failure hospital admissions by up to 58 percent.
 
Heart failure occurs when the heart is unable to pump enough blood to meet the body’s demands. The CardioMEMS HF System features a sensor that is implanted in the pulmonary artery (PA) during a minimally invasive procedure. Increased PA pressures appear before weight and blood pressure changes, which are often used as indirect measures of worsening heart failure.
 
The CardioMEMS HF System, from global health care leader Abbott, is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for commercial use in the U.S. The GUIDE-HF clinical trial followed the CHAMPION trial, which studied the effectiveness of the CardioMEMS HF System in New York Heart Association (NYHA) Functional Classification System class III heart failure patients who had been hospitalized for heart failure in the previous 12 months.


A good night’s sleep doesn’t come easy to the more than 22 million Americans who suffer from obstructive sleep apnea, which occurs when soft tissues in the airway collapse during sleep and block the flow of oxygen to the brain. The brain senses a lack of oxygen and wakes up the body just long enough to take a breath, causing a cycle of poor, disruptive sleep.

“A lack of sleep can be detrimental to our body, but sleep apnea can lead to other health issues, including moodiness, memory loss and even stroke, heart attack and death,” said Charles Zeller IV, D.O., an otolaryngologist with the Broward Health Physician Group. “That’s why it’s so important to be treated for sleep apnea.”
 
Dr. Zeller is the first physician in the Broward Health system to utilize Inspire® Upper Airway Stimulation (UAS), the only FDA-approved implantable device to combat obstructive sleep apnea. Inspire UAS is a less intrusive, more comfortable solution to obstructive sleep apnea. Implanted in the body as an outpatient procedure, the small device is activated following a 30-day healing period. Working inside the body with a patient’s natural breathing process, Inspire can combat certain types of obstructive sleep apnea, particularly in cases where a loss of muscle tone causes the tongue to fall back in the mouth.
 
Based on a patient’s unique breathing patterns, Inspire delivers a mild stimulation to the hypoglossal nerve, which controls tongue movement and prevents the tongue from blocking the airway. By stimulating these muscles, the airway remains open during sleep.
 
Inspire is controlled by the patient using a small, handheld Inspire sleep remote that is turned on before bedtime and turned off in the morning. Additionally, the patient can pause therapy during the night, if needed, and increase or decrease therapy settings.


Cleveland Clinic Martin Health welcomes board-certified otolaryngologist Tony Reisman, M.D. Dr. Reisman will also serve as the Department Chair for Ear, Nose and Throat Surgery at Martin Health.

Dr. Reisman completed an otolaryngology residency program at University Hospitals of Cleveland. Prior to residency, he completed his surgical internship at Washington University in St. Louis and his medical training at The Chicago Medical School. Dr. Reisman completed his premedical undergraduate degree at Washington University in St. Louis.
 
Prior to joining Martin Health, Dr. Reisman was a staff physician at Cleveland Clinic Head and Neck Institute in Ohio. He was also previously a staff physician at Case Western University Hospitals in Cleveland. In each of these roles, Dr. Reisman has educated many residents in training.