THE NEW YORK TIMES

Covid Politics Leave a Florida Public Hospital Shaken

Staff members of Sarasota Memorial Hospital are
bewildered by critics who continue to wage a campaign
against federal guidelines on Covid treatment.

SARASOTA, Fla. — The turmoil at Sarasota Memorial, one of Florida’s largest public hospitals, began last year after three candidates running on a platform of “health freedom” won seats on the nine-member board that oversees the hospital. Board
meetings, once sleepy, started drawing hundreds of angry people who, like the new members, denounced the hospital’s treatment protocols for Covid-19.

An internal review last month found that Sarasota Memorial did far better than some of its competitors in saving Covid patients’ lives. But that did little to quell detractors, whose campaign against the hospital has not relented. By then, the hospital
had become the latest public institution under siege by an increasingly large and vocal right-wing contingent in one of Florida’s most affluent counties, where a backlash to pandemic policies has started reshaping local government.

Some members of the Sarasota County Public Hospital Board and medical staff at Sarasota Memorial are bewildered and taken aback by critics’ continued preoccupation with Covid policy — chiefly the avoidance of ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, drugs
found to be ineffective or even harmful as Covid treatments.

“Most hospitals around the country are over Covid,” said Dr. James V. Fiorica, the hospital’s chief medical officer. “We’ve proven ourselves. Why aren’t we moving on?”

People who are part of the “health freedom” movement object to the fact that Sarasota Memorial closely followed guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health,which do not recommend using
ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine in treating Covid patients. Sarasota Memorial did allow those drugs as treatments, the review said, but only with a staff physician’s order and, eventually, a waiver.

Board meetings in recent months have drawn speakers who lost loved ones to Covid, though some appear not to live in the Sarasota area or to have had relatives treated for Covid at Sarasota Memorial, according to the hospital.

Tanya Parus, the president of the Sarasota County chapter of Moms for America, a conservative group, told the board at its February meeting that the community does not trust the hospital’s leaders. Some patients, she said, had “pleaded” for
treatments the hospital denied.

“It’s not about us being anti-vax. It’s not about us being Covid critics. It’s not about us having nothing to do all day but pick a public fight,” she said. “We know firsthand what happened upstairs in those hallways. We know how badly hearts
were aching.”

Dr. Fiorica said he understood the grief of those who lost loved ones to Covid but emphasized the hospital’s strong overall performance during the pandemic, despite grueling work conditions.

More: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/19/us/covid-florida-sarasota-memorial-hospital.html?referringSource=articleShare

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