Our community shouldn't tolerate threats to Sarasota Memorial's health care heroes

Sarasota Memorial Hospital has been a trusted cornerstone of this community for nearly a century, through decades of growth and generations of change. Just as SMH provided lifesaving care to our parents and grandparents through the polio epidemic of the 1940s, our dedicated doctors, nurses and staff worked around the clock, in the face of significant personal risk, to keep our community safe through the COVID-19 pandemic.

We owe a huge debt of gratitude to these health care heroes. Unfortunately, rather than receiving messages of support, our doctors, nurses and other staff at Sarasota Memorial Hospital are currently being subjected to a daily onslaught of violent verbal abuse. Many of these messages are full of profanity, antisemitic slurs and some even include graphic death threats.

As reported in the local press, law enforcement is involved.

A coordinated political campaign

It is important for Suncoast residents to be aware that these hate-filled messages are being spread as part of a coordinated political campaign taking place in our community, led by national activists who have never been patients at Sarasota Memorial and who do not live anywhere near Sarasota – or even Florida.

The small but vocal group behind this campaign is using misinformation about COVID-19 care at Sarasota Memorial Hospital to seed distrust in our award-winning public health system as they strive to strengthen their political standing in Florida. In addition to personal attacks on our clinicians, they are deploying a range of deceitful tactics, including spreading defamatory social media posts and leaving false reviews of the hospital and its physicians, to further their own ideological goals.

These attacks are not only reprehensible but also utterly unfounded, as demonstrated by the detailed information and data about Sarasota Memorial’s COVID care that is publicly available on smh.com.

Over the past three years, SMH cared for more than 70% of hospitalized COVID patients in Sarasota County. Despite all efforts, COVID was the third leading cause of death in the United States from 2020 to mid-2022.

Sarasota Memorial leaders and staff appreciate the heartfelt stories and concerns shared at recent Hospital Board meetings and understand the grief of those who lost loved ones during this time. Our health system has an important role to play in helping the community to heal and reach closure, which is why the Hospital Board has placed a significant emphasis on transparency and open, clear-eyed reflection.

This is exemplified by the Hospital Board’s request for a comprehensive three-year review of Sarasota Memorial's COVID care to be conducted, the findings of which were released in a public report last month. The report and independent data showed that Sarasota Memorial’s performance throughout the pandemic was strong. COVID patients hospitalized at SMH experienced fewer complications and shorter hospital stays – and, most importantly, its COVID mortality rate was nearly 25% lower than state and national hospital benchmarks.

The data speaks for itself, and the data shows that the campaign’s continuing accusations of poor care and patient outcomes at Sarasota Memorial Hospital are simply not based in fact.

Sarasota Memorial's resilient staff

You can rest assured that the 9,000 staff members who power Sarasota Memorial will continue to do what they do best – they will continue to provide nationally acclaimed health care for people living on the Suncoast. SMH’s clinicians are extraordinarily resilient and will not be deterred by agitators working against the best interests of the health system and the community it serves. However, it is unacceptable that their bravery and compassion are being repaid in this way, and that their already-demanding jobs are being made even more challenging.

Our doctors and nurses need our support.

Our community should not tolerate the bullying tactics of this unprecedented political attack to destroy our public hospital and privatize health care in our community. This will not always be comfortable, but we cannot allow ourselves to be cowed by a vocal minority who want to see our nearly 100-year-old community-owned hospital privatized and its clinicians vilified – and who also want to transfer decision making from a locally elected board to shareholders of a private corporation.

We all have different visions of what the best health care looks like, and our community may not always see eye-to-eye on the details. But we can all agree that the interests and needs of local residents should remain at the heart of their community-owned health system.

Tramm Hudson serves as chair of the Sarasota Memorial Hospital Board. He is a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel, a Sarasota banker and a longtime community leader.

This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Sarasota Memorial's health care heroes deserve thanks - not threats