Leading the Way

Looking Back, Moving Ahead

Greetings from all of us at Memorial — our Board, our medical staff and our thousands of Memorial caregivers. For the second consecutive year, our Annual Report (May 1, 2020, through April 30, 2021) is in a different format than you may remember from the years before COVID-19. We’re continuing to face the pandemic’s challenges — and we’re also marking some important milestones in Moving Health Forward for our patients, their families and our community. This report is the result.

By August of 2020, we thought COVID-19 had leveled off, only to experience the resurgence of January 2021 (and then of course the onslaught of the Delta variant later this year). Which means that for 19 months, our Memorial family has been answering the call of the pandemic without letup. Rest assured that their efforts will remain unflagging as long as the pandemic continues to test us.

At the same time, as one of Florida’s largest healthcare systems, Memorial has had to continue laying the groundwork for healthcare of the future. Long after COVID-19 is in the rearview mirror, South Floridians — and people from all over the country — will require the kind of highquality, patient- and family-centered care Memorial is known for. You’ll be pleased to know that we’ve remained focused on making Memorial a destination center for a broad range of services.

Our ability to deliver comprehensive cardiac care is just one example. All the elements of a destination heart care provider — the tools, the technology and the expertise — already exist at Memorial Cardiac and Vascular Institute, which means we can provide medical, interventional and surgical treatment for all cardiac diseases. We have:

• A continuum of cardiac care not found elsewhere in South Florida – Memorial’s outstanding cardiac team offers congenital heart patients comprehensive treatments from childhood through adulthood. This prevents the need to seek specialized treatments elsewhere, because the expertise for a lifetime of cardiac care is right here in their own backyard.
• The most innovative care that cardiac patients need – More than 70% of cardiac catheterizations and angioplasty procedures at Memorial are radial (using the wrist artery, not the groin), which reduces patient risk and improves outcomes. Since 2010, we’ve performed nearly 70 pediatric heart transplants at Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital and over 70 adult hearts, since 2014.
• Experts of today training the experts of tomorrow – Memorial Graduate Medical Education program has welcomed its frst class in its Cardiovascular Disease Fellowship Program, to train fellows in all aspects of cardiac care.
• Leading-edge technology – From heart transplant to ECMO and electrophysiology and more, Memorial Cardiac and Vascular Institute has the technology and expertise that heart patients used to have to travel hundreds of miles for.
• High ratings in heart surgery care – Memorial Cardiac and Vascular Institute has earned a threestar rating, the highest category of quality, from The Society of Thoracic Surgeons for coronary artery bypass grafting, aortic valve replacement, and mitral valve replacement and repair for the period ending December 2020. It’s a distinction that places Memorial among the elite heart surgery programs in the U.S. and Canada.

Why shouldn’t Memorial be a destination center for providing outstanding healthcare? From our beginnings as a single community hospital in 1953, we’ve grown to become a regional academic medical center. And we know that, pandemic or no pandemic, the coming years promise us even more exciting opportunities to Move Health Forward.

On behalf of all of us at Memorial, thank you for your continued support. You give us energy and confidence to face what we know will be a great future — for ourselves, and for those we’re proud to serve.

Aurelio M. Fernandez III, FACHE
President and Chief Executive Officer

Douglas A. Harrison
Chairman of the Board