Visionary Expands Services to Support
Mission of Care

Regional Growth Benefits Pensacola Health Care

Sacred Heart President and CEO Patrick Madden reviews plans for the Sacred Heart Medical Park in Pace, which is preparing to open services that include physician offices, a surgery center, lab and diagnostic imaging services and rehabilitation center. With Madden are (left) Freddie Hopson, construction foreman, and Dave Franklin, project superintendent, both with Greenhut Construction Co.

When Patrick Madden took the helm at Sacred Heart Hospital 10 years ago, Sacred Heart was a brick hospital partially hidden behind pine trees along Ninth Avenue in Pensacola.

With his arrival, Sacred Heart accelerated the expansion of its Pensacola campus and began a remarkable decade of growth into other communities of Northwest Florida and South Alabama. Today, as Sacred Heart celebrates its 90th anniversary, the hospital is regarded by consumers as the most preferred health care provider in Northwest Florida. Under Madden’s visionary leadership, Sacred Heart’s health ministry has blossomed to become a truly regional health care delivery system, with a network of hospitals, physician offices, surgery centers, rehabilitation centers and home care services stretching from Mobile, Ala. to Panama City Beach.

Madden said he recognized that Sacred Heart Hospital’s growth in Pensacola and its mission to serve the poor would be hampered unless Sacred Heart’s services could grow beyond Pensacola.

“What we’ve attempted to do is to reach out,” Madden says. “We had to expand our geographic range to bring in patients from outside the community. We had to create a larger critical mass that was reflective of the growth of the entire region and large enough to support the millions of dollars of new investment that we expected to make in new facilities, new technology and skilled people.”

Because of this expansion, Sacred Heart has invested in the following services in the past decade:

• Sacred Heart Medical Group that began in 1995 and now has nearly 90 primary care and specialty care physicians in offices from Gulf Shores, Ala. to Panama City Beach.
• New Children’s and Women’s Hospital in 1996
• New Regional Heart & Vascular Institute in 2000
• New Emergency/Trauma Center in 2000
• New regional air ambulance service in 2001
• New nursing home, Haven of Our Lady of Peace, 2001
• New hospital in Walton County in 2003
• Total Joint Replacement Center in 2004
• New Regional Stroke Center in 2005
• New Medical Park at Airport Boulevard 2005
• New Institute for Surgical Weight Loss in 2005

Madden notes that the Pensacola area benefits in several ways from this regional growth. First, people in Pensacola gain access to better, more sophisticated health care. As a regional medical center, Sacred Heart offers advanced technology in nearly all critical areas. It is the region’s only teaching hospital and provides exceptional clinical depth in critical services such as pediatrics, women’s services, cardiac care, cancer services, trauma services and orthopedics.

“In order to create a great institution, you have to create a place where great doctors, great nurses and great researchers can come together,” Maddens adds. “That can only occur when you have attained a large enough institutional size. Because of that growth, we can attract the best doctors and nurses to our community.”

Beyond better health care, Sacred Heart’s regional development also has meant economic benefits for the entire region. “We are a huge economic engine and a major part of one of the biggest and most sophisticated industries in this area,” Madden says. In the past 10 years, Sacred Heart’s growth has led to the creation of an estimated 2,000 new jobs, at a pay scale that is nearly double the average salary in this area.

Finally, Madden says Sacred Heart’s growth has allowed it to continue its mission of service to the poor. Escambia County is one of the poorest in Florida, with great health needs that are not always met. Recalling his arrival in 1995, Madden says: “When I looked at the needs in this community, especially the needs of the most vulnerable of our population, the only way we could support the area’s increasing level of indigent care was to make this institution larger.” Today, Sacred Heart provides care to the poor at an annual cost of $22 million. “We will continue to be a major safety net for the poor of this community,” he says.

Looking to the future, Madden says Sacred Heart will continue to look for opportunities to grow in collaboration with key partners such as St. Joe Company, which donated land for Sacred Heart Hospital on the Emerald Coast near Destin, and Nemours Children’s Clinic, which has recruited outstanding pediatric specialists to Pensacola. Sacred Heart is currently working with St. Joe and Gulf County officials on plans to build a new community hospital in Port St. Joe.

Other future plans for Sacred Heart include a new Children’s Hospital on the corner of Ninth Avenue and Airport Boulevard. Sacred Heart also is preparing to open a new Medical Park in Pace, planning a major expansion of women’s services at Sacred Heart Hospital on the Emerald Coast, and preparing to expand services in Baldwin County, Ala. in collaboration with our sister hospital, Providence Hospital in Mobile.

“Ninety years later, Sacred Heart continues to attract great physicians and to launch new services that meet the needs of families throughout our growing region,” Madden says. “All of this continues to give life to our founders' spirit of care and compassion for those who have always sought our help.”

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Shaping New Lives
Sacred Heart Institute for Surgical Weight Loss is a new service to help people who are clinically obese achieve significant weight loss safely through minimally invasive surgery. Dedicated to the highest level of patient safety, the program includes comprehensive physical and psychological evaluations, the safest surgical techniques available for weight-loss surgery today, care in a specially designed inpatient bariatric unit, nutrition therapy, a support group, and a five-year follow-up program. The program is under the direction of a fellowship-trained bariatric surgeon and the team includes a psychologist, dietitian, and a registered nurse who serves as manager. See our bariatric team photo on our Web site and learn more about this service at www.sacred-heart.org.

Convenient Care for Busy Families
In today’s society, convenience is the key to helping busy families stay healthy. That’s why Sacred Heart Medical Park is conveniently located at the corner of Airport Boulevard and College Parkway. Outpatient diagnostic services are conveniently located on one floor, including ultrasound, high-speed digital x-ray, CT, MRI, lab services and much more. This Medical Park also is home to The Center for Wound Care & Hyperbaric Medicine, housing two hyperbaric chambers that promote rapid healing of chronic wounds. Plenty of convenient parking is right outside the building. Watch for Sacred Heart Medical Park in Pace to open in January 2006!

The Best Care Comes from the Best Doctors!
On Sept. 1, 1915, Dr. Walton Clifton Payne, Sr. and Dr. S.R. Mallory Kennedy performed the first surgery at Pensacola’s first modern hospital. Since then, Sacred Heart has provided modern technology and innovative services to support physicians’ goals to give their patients the very best of care. Today, nearly 700 primary care and specialty physicians practice at both Sacred Heart in Pensacola and Sacred Heart Hospital on the Emerald Coast, including Sacred Heart Medical Group, a growing physician network that reaches from Panama City Beach to Foley, Ala. Visit www.sacred-heart.org for a directory of Sacred Heart physicians, or call (850) 416-1600 for physician referrals, appointments, and answers to health questions from a registered nurse.

We’re Hip to New Ways of Caring
In 2004, Sacred Heart opened a Total Joint Replacement Center to offer a skilled, experienced team for joint replacement surgery along with a specialized rehabilitation unit to help surgery patients get back to a better quality of life.

An award-winning Center of Excellence, Sacred Heart’s Comprehensive Orthopedics Services department offers more than a dozen orthopedists specializing in joint replacement, sports medicine, and pediatric orthopedics. Want to learn more? Visit www.sacred-heart.org.