“If it wasn’t for that incident, we would not be on the board,” Mr. Rohe said.
He said the hospital had dismissed concerns about its Covid protocols from ordinary taxpayers who did not feel like Sarasota Memorial, a 901-bed facility, was catering to their needs.
“Nobody wants to talk about that,” Mr. Rohe said. “So the people who elected us, they’re saying, ‘Hey, listen, we want to see evidence. We want to know facts. We’re not interested in P.R. We’re not interested in so much credentials or what the government wants.’”
The hospital’s internal Covid review, which took more than 70 people and 850 hours to compile and compared data such as patient outcomes with that from some 1,300 other hospitals across the country, found fewer deaths and shorter stays for Sarasota Memorial Covid patients.
“The numbers speak for themselves,” Mr. Hudson, the board chairman, said.
Still, Mr. Rohe and another new board member voted not to accept the report — the other members did — and questioned its validity. “What they tried to do is cherry-pick statistics to show what a great hospital this is,” Mr. Rohe said.
Dr. Jonathan Hoffberger, the cardiovascular surgeon who has been attacked by some hospital critics, said he worries the acrimony will result in the departure of some of Sarasota Memorial’s 9,000 employees — and will make recruiting doctors and nurses difficult.
“Quietly and slowly, it’ll erode the medical staff,” he said. “People aren’t going to put up with it. They’re going to go somewhere else.”
Susan C. Beachy and Sheelagh McNeill contributed research.
