Tampa General Hospital (TGH) announced the promotion of Steve Harris to senior vice president of payor and government affairs.

As senior vice president, Harris will continue to promote policies that enable TGH to deliver high quality, accessible and affordable care among policymakers on the federal and state level, including members of Congress, federal administration officials, members of the Florida Legislature and key stakeholders in Florida’s health care agencies.

In addition, Harris serves as the key liaison for health plans and government payors, including Medicare, Florida Medicaid, and Tricare, and oversees regulatory compliance efforts with federal law, state legislation and regulatory rules.

Harris joined the TGH team in 2011. His experience in health care policy spans more than 25 years. Prior to joining TGH, Harris was a Senior Manager in the KPMG Healthcare Advisory practice.



Rodolfo J. Blandon, President Cleveland Clinic Weston Hospital thanked the caregivers for providing high quality and empathetic care everyday making Cleveland Clinic Weston the #1 Hospital in South Florida for 5 years in a row.

From left to right—Roberto Piloto, MD, Eduardo Gruener, Cleveland Clinic Weston Board Member, Shaun Lang, Cleveland Clinic Weston Board Chairman, Conor Delaney, MD, PhD, CEO and President, Cleveland Clinic’s Florida Region, Margaret Brown, Mayor, City of Weston, Rodolfo Blandon MD, MBA, President of Cleveland Clinic Weston, Mariana Berho, MD, Chief of Staff, Cleveland Clinic Weston, Kerry Major, Chief Nursing Officer, Cleveland Clinic’s Florid Region, Scott Ross, MD, Chief Medical Officer, Cleveland Clinic Weston, Alex Espinosa, Chief Operating Officer, Cleveland Clinic Weston.

 

 

 



October 26, 2022 – Nicklaus Children’s Hospital leaders and supporters joined together last week for a groundbreaking ceremony to celebrate the launch of the next phase of the hospital’s master facility plan, construction of a 127,000-square-foot surgical tower slated for completion in 2024. The tower will rise four stories above the hospital’s Emergency Department, located at the center of the main campus near Coral Gables.

Among those in attendance were hospital namesakes Jack and Barbara Nicklaus, Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and Miami-Dade County Chief Operations Officer, Jimmy Morales.

“We are beaming with pride as we celebrate the groundbreaking of the new surgical tower,” said Matthew A. Love, president and CEO of Nicklaus Children’s Health System, parent organization of the hospital. “The tower will strengthen our legacy as the number one children’s hospital in Florida and the premier center for delivering the best surgical care to the children of our community, our state and around the world.”

In a joint statement, golf Icon Jack Nicklaus and his wife, Barbara, said, “We are honored to be here to make history with the groundbreaking of the surgical tower. The planned new state-of-the art surgical suites have been on the hospital’s “wish list” for many years and we know the tower is going to fill an important need for the children of South Florida and around the globe.”

The surgical tower will enable the hospital to construct new state-of-the-art operating suites to replace existing operating rooms that are now 35 years old and lack the size and ceiling height necessary to accommodate fully the latest equipment, along with multidisciplinary surgical teams required for complex cases. Offerings will include augmented reality during surgery, virtual reality surgical planning and more. The new structure will also offer spacious and private pre- and post-surgical care spaces for the children and families we serve.

Nicklaus Children’s is the only specialty-licensed children’s hospital in South Florida. Florida’s Specialty Hospitals for Children – which include Nicklaus Children’s, John Hopkins All Children’s Hospital, Wolfson Children’s Hospital and Nemours Children’s Health  – are the only four hospitals with a specialty-license designation by the state and the only Florida hospitals that solely provide and invest in care for children. The hospitals are committed to ensuring every Florida child has access to the world-class, specialized care they need. These hospitals are uniquely designated to care for the most complex medical diagnoses. Year after year, we continue to expand our services and stay at the leading edge of pediatric treatment and research.

The surgical tower at Nicklaus Children’s is a companion to its Advanced Pediatric Care Pavilion, the hospital’s 217,000-square-foot, six-story bed tower that is home to the hospital’s three intensive care units (pediatric, neonatal and congenital heart) as well as the hematology-oncology/bone marrow transplant, and neurology units. The tower features spacious single patient rooms, an intraoperative MRI and the latest technology.

The contractor for the project is Brasfield & Gorrie and the architect is Perkins+Will. The owner’s representative is CBRE Project Management.

About Nicklaus Children’s Hospital 
Founded in 1950 by Variety Clubs International, Nicklaus Children’s Hospital is South Florida’s only licensed specialty hospital exclusively for children, with approximately 800 attending physicians, including more than 500 pediatric subspecialists. The 309-bed hospital, known as Miami Children’s Hospital from 1983 through 2014, is renowned for excellence in all aspects of pediatric medicine with many specialty programs routinely ranked among the best in the nation by U.S. News & World Report since 2008. In the 2022-2023 ranking, the hospital tied with two other hospitals as the number one children’s hospital in Florida. The hospital is also home to the largest pediatric teaching program in the southeastern United States and since 2003 has been designated an American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC) Magnet facility, the nursing profession’s most prestigious institutional honor. For more information, please visit www.nicklauschildrens.org





The VA health care system has led the health care industry in use of electronic health records with its Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology (VistA), which allows health care providers to continuously update patient information, including lab tests and results, medications and diet. Continuing its innovation in health care information technology, VA uses computer technology to improve the informed consent process.

iMedConsent , developed under the direction of VA’s National Center for Ethics in Health Care by Atlanta-based software developer Dialog Medical, takes physicians step by step through the informed consent process, displays detailed educational materials about risks and benefits of proposed treatments, generates and stores consent forms, incorporates electronic signatures into records and imports information from patient records. The goal of informed consent is to ensure that patients are knowledgeable participants in decisions about their health care. It generally requires that patients understand their choices through discussions of proposed treatments, reasonable alternatives to proposed care, risks and benefits of each alternative. iMedConsent is just another example of the VA mission to provide the best care to our nation’s veterans. In the words of former Secretary of Veterans Affairs, Anthony J. Pricipi:
 
"We owe it to our veterans to do all we can to ensure that they understand the care they receive and to make sure that the informed consent process is as patient-friendly as possible. This new program is a great complement to the success of VA’s electronic patient records systems.”