Sarasota County Public Hospital Board, at-large Seat 2: Stephen Guffanti

Age: 72

Current occupation: Retired doctor with specialty in Emergency Medicine; volunteer CEO for Rocket Phonics Foundation whose tutors have reached more than 1,000 elementary students.

Resident of Sarasota County: About 10 years

Why are you running for election?

My life has never been the same since my roommate died at Sarasota Memorial — unnecessarily, in my opinion. 

I have tried to get Sarasota Memorial to fix the problems that left my roommate’s children orphans, but after two years of trying, it’s clear Sarasota Memorial has little interest in making the changes needed to keep patients safe. 

I’m a doctor, and it doesn’t sit right with me at all that patients can still be at risk of unnecessarily life-threatening care there based on over-reliance on poor federal guidance.

I decided that I needed to have a seat at the board to better ensure patient safety. The board currently has no medical doctors, so I feel that my background as a retired emergency medicine physician will be very helpful for board decisions. 

Have you ever run for public office before? If so, for what office? 

Yes. I served 12 years on the Vista Unified School District board in California. During that time, our dropout rate went from 32% to 11%, and students reading at grade level rose from 37% to 55%. This was mostly done by focusing our board on academics, which is a school board’s primary mission.

What experience and/or special skills do you have that make you a better candidate than your opponents? 

Currently, there are six business people on the board and no doctors. My opponent is another businessman. Without medical experience, his only criterion is money. When money is your only criterion patients die. 

If the board had six doctors, I wouldn’t run. I am running to bring my medical knowledge to the board for balance. I would bring a wealth of skills and experience to the Sarasota Memorial Hospital board in comparison to my opponent. 

I’m a retired medical doctor who has volunteered hundreds of hours to advocate for safety improvements needed to protect patients at the hospital. 

What do you see as the top three or four priorities that the hospital board needs to address? And how should those priorities be addressed?

• Ensure board policy is executed properly when it comes to the patient-physician relationship.

Five-hundred seventy-seven SMH COVID patients died largely because of the inflexibility created by the COVID Task Force. With doctors on the board to explain the impact of such a task force, I believe the board would not have sanctioned it and the doctors would be free to use their own judgment.

• Continuity of care. Many patients have personal doctors outside of the SMH system. The communication and coordination between the doctors who take care of the patients before and after the hospital is minimal. This creates situations where vital medicines are dropped, and medicines that should be dropped are kept going. The sooner this is resolved the better for everyone. I haven’t seen this item come up before the board so it may simply need to be placed on the agenda.
• Medical quality review is currently being used to punish the doctors who use their own judgment. At the same time, it missed three times that two doctors issued orders on me before ever examining me. This committee needs to be refocused on its primary job of quality review. 

Probably the first step is to review the rubric used by the committee to review charts. The next step is to remove undue influence on the reviewing doctors. Hopefully, this will be all that it is needed. Please keep in mind that SMH is a teaching hospital; medical quality should be high because that is what our residents will learn.

On a scale of A to F, with A being excellent, what grade would you give the performance of the current SMH executive team? Why, and what if anything should change in the way SMH leadership operates the SMH system?

The executive team is David Verinder, president & CEO; Jeff Limbocker, CFO; James Fiorica, M.D., chief medical Officer; Carol Ann Kalish, chief legal officer; and Sharon Roush, president, Sarasota Memorial Hospital-Venice Campus.

I would give the leadership team a C. 

The CFO produced totally different numbers than the Observer, which indicates a lack of transparency that the board and the public deserve. 

In my opinion, the CMO mishandled the review of my medical chart. The hospital’s public relations arm often says my statements are undocumented, but they are in fact well-documented and much of my chart has been presented to the board as proof.

Multiple patients have had terrible things happen to them at Sarasota Memorial, but leadership doesn’t seem to be adequately resolving their concerns. 

Three out of five is a C.

SMH leadership needs to balance the financial needs of the hospital with the medical needs of the public. The CFO can provide more transparency.

The hospital’s property-tax millage rate has been 1.042 mills. In 2023, that generated $81.9 million in property-tax revenue, accounting for 58% of the hospital system’s surplus over its expenses. What is your position on the hospital’s millage rate — should it remain 1.042 mills; should it be reduced or increased? Why?

Multiple variables affect millage rate discussions, and some of these factors are not stable enough to allow for a response without guidance from Sarasota Memorial’s solid team of financial experts. 

The tax proceeds that Sarasota Memorial receives are based on property taxes, which have been robust. Surging inflation, the anticipated impact of illegal immigration and the unpredictable impact of potential future pandemics are significant factors to consider, and I would look to the financial team to address areas in their millage rate recommendations as well.

The patient billing seems to cover maintenance. Some reserve is prudent because Medicare can decide to unilaterally cut payments. 

I would keep the millage rate the same.

A faction of Sarasota County citizens contends the hospital should be sold and privatized. What is your position on this and why?

I strongly support keeping our hospital public with traditional public input. It allows Sarasota County residents to have a voice in what goes on at the hospital — to speak directly to the board during public comments and to choose our board members in public elections. 

The fact I can run for a position on the board is only available because this is a public hospital. The fact that the treatment I and other patients received still has a chance to get fixed is only because this hospital is public. 

Private hospitals would have less incentive to provide high quality patient care than our hospital, which has a publicly-elected board that answers to our community. 

I oppose privatization. Public hospitals can have the public’s interests in mind. Private hospitals only have the shareholders’ interest in mind.

Do you agree or disagree with the board’s decision as outlined below— why?

(Regarding COVID-19 vaccines, the hospital board recently rejected a motion from Board Member Victor Rohe to add on the SMH website, among other points, the following: “to fully inform the public of the lack of pre-authorization safety data, the evidence of probable risks of these injections and of [Florida Surgeon General] Dr. Joseph Ladapo’s recent call to immediately halt the use of these COVID-19 mRNA injections. … Further, all staff and employees should be instructed, when they interact with patients or other members of the community who make inquiries about the COVID-19 vaccine, to refer those patients or community members to the information available on the SMH website concerning the risks and lack of safety data, rather than simply referring those individuals to local pharmacies that continue to dispense these potentially dangerous injections.”

Instead the board unanimously voted to support the following: “That the Board will continue to respect and honor every patient’s right to make [his/her] own health care decision within the patient-physician relationship, and using all resources available to them to inform the discussions surrounding those decisions … [T]he Board will continue to endeavor not to invade the physician-patient relationship or mandate treatment regimens for patients to its physicians.”)

The motion that was passed supports the very essence of medical freedom. Doctors need to be free to advise, and patients need to be free to seek a second opinion. This is why the hospital needs doctors on its board. 

The board didn’t understand that the hospital’s COVID Task Force violated the doctor-patient relationship by compelling the hospital’s doctors to follow one treatment plan in exclusion of their own judgment, and it deprived the patient of a second opinion as every doctor treated per protocol.