Fewer people call for second Sarasota Memorial Hospital inquiry of COVID-19 response
SARASOTA – Several speakers renewed a call Monday for the Sarasota County Public Hospital Board to empower an independent panel to investigate the public hospital system’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, but on a day when fewer than 50 people were in the audience, only 11 spoke during public comment.
Of those, six continued to question how Sarasota Memorial conducted an internal investigation of its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The speakers did not suggest how such a panel would be chosen or compensated.
It marked at least the fifth hospital board meeting at which the issue has been raised, though the intensity has waned at the last two.
Related: Sarasota Memorial Hospital board votes against second COVID-19 response inquiry
Venice East resident Barbara Vaughn and Osprey resident Ann Vandersteel, who is also co-chair of the Zelenko Freedom Foundation, took the hospital to task, again for following Centers for Disease Control protocols or for how it treated COVID-19 patients.
“If you had truly started with the patient first and the patient always being put first, you would have immediately abandoned the protocol fed to you by the CDC," Vaughn said, adding: “And you would have done instead what was best for each individual patient.”
Earlier: COVID-19 response: Sarasota Memorial Hospital had better than anticipated survival rate
Dr. Stephen Guffanti, a former emergency room doctor who was treated for COVID-19 at Sarasota Memorial in 2021 and a frequent critic of the hospital, kept his comments brief and praiseed hospital board member Patricia Maraia who has been working with him to develop an independent evaluation of his case.
“It’s been almost two years and I have been grateful for the progress,” he said.
With board member Bridgette Fiorucci on an excused absence to attend a class, none of the eight members present indicated interest in an outside investigation. The majority of the board and top medical officials have contended the hospital's pandemic performance was exemplary.
Fiorucci had sought an outside inquiry at the April 17 meeting. That failed on a 6-2 vote with only Fiorucci and Second Vice Chairman Victor Rohe in favor of a separate investigation.
The "Health Freedom" movement, which helped propel Fiorucci, Rohe and Maraia to hospital board seats last November, led to a packed meeting late last year calling for an inquiry, which resulted in the February release of Sarasota Memorial's COVID-19 investigation. Premier Inc., a national quality improvement company, provided data for the study that compared COVID outcomes at SMH with other hospitals and determined that Sarasota Memorial's COVID patients' had better treatment outcomes that most other comparable facilities in Florida and nationally.
That release sparked a social media frenzy among conservative hospital critics that led to death threats against hospital staff. The critics held a rally in Venice that served as a warmup for that day's hospital board meeting.
This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Fewer people ask Sarasota Memorial Hospital for 2nd COVID-19 inquiry
