SMH Heart Pavilion

My mom is the soon to be former patient of the heart failure clinic @ Sarasota Memorial. The first np my mother met with, focused on a one element of the lab results, instructing my mom to stop all lasix. Within a week she completely backed up w fluid, went back to the clinic and was told it didn't feel like there was any fluid in her tummy. Instructioning my mom to go back in her meds as needed sit tight for a month until they can get her in her w the head of cardiology. What a mess, my moms kidneys got so bad she started to become disoriented, thankfully my husband is a pulmonary doctor and is getting all the fluid out w correct meds . Tomorrow we head to Orlando to see the heart failure specialists. Travel to Tampa or Orlando if possible. Too easy to fall through the cracks here. Two thumbs down. UPDATE!!!!! I am going to bump my review up, as I only had second hand knowledge of what the staff at SMH were advising my mom to do, & the info they received as well. We would not have gotten where we are now without my mom having the experience she did at Sarasota Memorial. Ultimately, we got my mom to Advent Orlando East. She was admitted in September , and placed on the heart transplant list within a week. December 4, 2024 she received a heart transplant. On 12/16 my mom was discharged to my house on the East Coast . It's pretty incredible but she's back home w my stepfather in Manatee County. My mom is driving, walking, keeping house, exercising - pretty much living better than she has in 20 years, & she's not even at the 6 month point! Bottom line is as a patient you have to be a super informed, yet humble & willing to try and be teachable when it comes to treatment options. Medicine is a business, as consumers (patients) it's our job to seek out the care we're most comfortable with. Take good care:)

The CHF Clinic is supurb, My mother had an acute CHF experience resulting in a 14 day hospital stay including 3 nights in ICU. I was scared out of my mind on how to care for her following her hospitalization. The CHF clinic provided me with written instructions on medication dosing based on weight gain, fluid and salt restrictions, provided me with a 24 hour phone number I could call if I have questions. I couldn't be more grateful for this level of aftercare.

These are nice people...and I guess they're doing the best they can...but the structure of the operation leaves much to be desired. Every time I went I saw someone different. That leads to the question..."who's in charge of my case?" The answer: Nobody. I was very ill, very uncomfortable and close to death before I decided to go go elsewhere. I'm now receiving the kind of care and follow-up I had hoped to get at SMH. Very dissappointing.

My dad had a bad experience at this hospital -- not the heart procedure itself, but absolutely everything else associated with it. Communication with him and his family about what was going on was non-existent, and they even forgot to prescribe his medication on the day he was discharged that was vital to keep platelets from forming around his new stents. (We had no choice but to have a doctor in our family call in the prescription instead just before the pharmacy closed for the evening!) I sent their patient advocacy department a 3-page letter detailing what went wrong, when, and by whom and asked for a response, which was not received. Three weeks later, I sent a "second request" by registered mail and still received no response. I am his health care surrogate and power of attorney, but that clearly carried no weight with them. I gave them almost 2 months to do the right thing, but instead of communicating with me, they chose to send a letter to my father simply apologizing that we were upset, but accepting no accountability for what happened, then declared the matter closed. They were wrong about that; they earned this poor review, and NOW the matter is closed. Buyer beware!

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