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Dear Friend,

 

My name is Dr. Stephen Guffanti.  I am a medical doctor with a 50-year history of helping people recover from illness and disease and return to health. 

 

Before my recent retirement, most of my decades in medicine were spent in hospital emergency rooms saving lives and dealing with every medical condition you can imagine. 

 

When I was an ER doctor, hospital administrators had no authority in the emergency room.  The only rule in the ER was, DO AS THE DOCTOR SAYS, BECAUSE HE'S GOT LIVES TO SAVE. In the emergency room, the doctor made the medical decisions. Administrators with no medical experience who evaluate numbers, not patients, had no place coming between a doctor and the patient he wanted to heal.   

 

I have treated thousands of patients.  I’ve saved hundreds of lives.  I know what I’m doing. 

 

This is a true story. 

 

I was a COVID patient at Sarasota Memorial Hospital. I couldn't understand why my roommate was doing so poorly--he was a marathon runner and a dad still young enough to have teens at home. Things were looking very rough for him, so I told him I could take a look at his chart and see if anything jumped out. I noticed that based on his labs and x-rays,  he probably needed antibiotics. A simple follow-up test would confirm it, and change his future from likely being bound for the morgue, to having a better chance of getting back home and  being there for his kids.But inexplicably, the hospital had failed to give him that test.

 

We asked for a doctor to check in with us about this, but he never came. Hour after hour went by, and we asked over and over again. My roommate was struggling to the point of needing to go to the ICU, but still, no doctor came.

 

Finally, I ended up calling an Infectious Disease colleague in the middle of the night to get his help to convince the nurses to get a doctor. But she wouldn't even hear what he had to say, and my roommate was left untested, struggling for air, and bound for the ICU, with oxygen saturation levels dipping into the 70's.

 

I did everything I could to get him better care. Finally, when it was clear no one was going to budge and convince a doctor to come, I decided to blow the whistle.  I documented what was happening to him on Facebook, publicly calling out the hospital for their poor care, and hoping someone outside the hospital could help advocate for him from the outside. 

 

20 minutes later, I found myself in 4-point restraints.

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It took over an hour, but a doctor finally put his name down to officially sign off on authorizing them...without even examining me. 

 

I was left tied up like that for 5 hours. I thank God that the next shift refused to be complicit and released me...also without an exam. 

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Something doesn't add up. You know that. I know that. But the hospital still says what happened to me meets their Standard of Care.

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And I can't stand for that. It goes against EVERYTHING IN ME to walk away knowing this can still happen to other patients.
I took an oath to protect patients through thick and thin,
and every doctor reading this knows that 
we don't take those oaths lightly. 

I realized that sometimes it's not enough to protect patients from the bedside.

Sometimes, you have to defend them in the board room.

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So I'm taking a break from my retirement  to run for an unpaid seat on the hospital board. 

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If elected, I have big plans to restore medicine to the way it should be.

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Where you don't have to wait a month for an appointment.  Or wait for hours to see a doctor in the Emergency Room. Or when a loved one dies, make it more likely that we'll get an honest answer to why.

 

Hospitals now seem to be run more by businessmen and lawyers than by doctors. That's not right. And my mission is to put patients and their doctors back in the driver's seat. Because that's what medicine is supposed to be about: healing patients. 
 

It’s time doctors have a seat on the hospital board.

 

Dr. Tamzin Rosenwasser and I are running to fill that gap.  We are both retired physicians who will insist on excellent patient care.  

 

For me, this is personal.  And I believe it’s personal for you too.  Here’s why: 

 

Over time, the odds of you or someone you love being hospitalized are near 100%.  And when that time comes, you want to recover.  You want your loved one to return home.  And the LAST thing you want, is to have administrators with no medical training dictating which treatments your doctor can provide. 

 

We need a safer hospital.  And you can play an important role in making that happen.  Your support will help get our message out. Since over 90% of everyone we polled said doctors should be on the hospital board, getting the message out is likely all it will take to win.

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Dr. Tamzin Rosenwasser and I are ready to step up.  We are ready to win seats on the board and return sanity to medicine.

To make this real we need to receive donations to cover direct out-of-pocket campaign costs.  

 

The maximum donation is $1,000 and truly any donation will bring us closer to that goal.  The limit is per person, so couples and families can have multiple members contribute as they feel called. To contribute, click here.

 

Thank you in advance for your support.   Together, we can save lives. 

 

Sincerely,

 

 

Stephen Guffanti, MD

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