Sarasota Memorial Hospital Lost Its Soul During COVID
An open letter submitted to hospital board members on March 31, 2023
Dear Members of the Hospital Board:
Our hospital lost its soul during COVID.
It withheld safe, FDA-approved, life-saving medicine during a pandemic. It continues to do so by not having outpatient and inpatient doctors available who will prescribe ivermectin at the safe dosages supported by best practices. Hospital messaging is giving the impression that Sarasota Memorial did not withhold ivermectin, but the truth is that our hospital did in fact prevent patients, whose lives were on the line and who were begging for ivermectin, from receiving it. Our community cannot be okay with this and you cannot be okay with this, because patients died unnecessarily and will continue to die unnecessarily.
Our hospital is recommending the experimental COVID vaccine for all ages 6 months and up that has been shown to be both dangerous and ineffective at preventing transmission of the virus. [**2024 UPDATE: Kudos to Sarasota Memorial for removing the CDC recommendation of COVID vaccination for all ages 6 months and up after the Florida Department of Health advised against. Kudos also for not administering the COVID vaccine at any Sarasota Memorial location, according to my understanding.**] Serious adverse events and deaths linked to it are off the charts. This has been confirmed by our Surgeon General. Once you have read our Surgeon General’s letter to the FDA and CDC referencing the 4400% increased reporting rate in Florida for serious adverse events, once you have seen the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System’s sky-high reported adverse events with your own eyes, and once you have glanced through Edward Dowd’s book, Cause Unknown: The Epidemic of Sudden Deaths in 2021 and 2022, you cannot be okay with this. You cannot be okay that our hospital has not even bothered to implement adequate monitoring systems to watch for serious adverse events to the COVID vaccine, which is experimental and has no long-term safety studies.
Dr. Guffanti was tied up for hours in 4-point restraints without the supplemental oxygen he needed. The application of the Baker Act is not supported by the facts and points to a very disturbing, highly credible incident of patient abuse. The hospital’s response to his reported experience reflects an intolerable, systemic problem with identifying and addressing instances of potential patient mistreatment here at Sarasota Memorial: “I am sorry we did not meet your expectations…We sincerely hope that if the need should arise that you will continue to use our services…” No reasonable person can be okay with this.
These deeply disturbing problems at our hospital have been haunting me and I cannot stand by and watch this continue without doing everything I can to help restore the excellent care we used to expect at Sarasota Memorial. Would you be available to share your thoughts about all this is in a phone call? If you are okay with any of this, I’d like to exchange our understanding of all significant information, so we can share a common foundation of the facts to facilitate resolving these life-and-death issues.
We are at a point now where you either need to call for these problems to be resolved, or you own them. This is happening on your watch. You have the power to direct that both outpatient and inpatient COVID patients have access to the FLCCC protocols they are requesting. You have the power to direct that our hospital establish robust monitoring procedures to identify potential serious adverse events from the COVID vaccine. You have the power to investigate what happened that allowed 12+ safety nets at our hospital to be breached and resulted in a retired Emergency Medicine physician being tied up for hours in 4-point restraints without the supplemental oxygen he needed, and without any acknowledgment by our hospital that this is not acceptable.
We have now completed all the prerequisites mentioned by board members for proceeding to a third-party, independent investigation:
Internal review completed and Community Report released.
Public feedback from Community Report received, including at the March meeting, which overwhelmingly confirms that our community’s life-and-death concerns were not resolved by the report and we continue to call for a third-party, independent review.
What would you like your legacy to be from your time on the board? Do you want it known that you stood up to restore excellence to all areas of care at Sarasota Memorial, or are you content to be yet another trusted official who failed to protect us when we needed it most?
We are calling on you to help restore our hospital’s reputation for excellence in all areas of care, and its soul.