Key is a new nurse-navigator program and hotline.
Johannes Werner
Original Air Date: March 5, 2025
Host: If you are pregnant in the United States, it’s increasingly hard to find an obstetrician to help you through the process and birth. The situation on the Suncoast is no different. But the local public hospital has now partnered with a network of nonprofits and state institutions. One of the outcomes: As of today, you can call a hotline—917-MOMS—and a nurse-navigator will take you by the hand.
Johannes Werner: If you have been looking for an OB/GYN doctor in Sarasota over the last few years, tough luck. You may have ended up having to commute to a neighboring county, or—worse—getting no prenatal care at all. And that often gets you in the emergency room. Dr. James Fiorica, chief medical officer at Sarasota Memorial Hospital, explains.
James Fiorica: It is a problem nationally. This is not unique to this area or to Florida. Nationally, there is a decreased number of OB/GYNs. When they use those projections, they say there should be 47,000 obstetricians in the country. In reality, this year, there’s an estimated 46,500, so we’re already short in the country. Over the last ten years, you’ve seen probably 200 hospitals around the country close their maternity units because of shortages in staff in those areas.
Right now, we’re finding that patients are having trouble finding doctors for their prenatal care, so we’re starting to see more people come in through the emergency room having obstetrical problems.
JW: Much of the attrition of obstetricians has to do with the stresses of the job, according to Fiorica. Ideally, each group practice would have three or four obstetricians rotating on-call duties. But local practices—let alone the two local nonprofits that care for low-income and uninsured patients—are far from that ideal, and it’s been hard for them to get hold of one of the few OB/GYN residents that learn at U.S. hospitals every year.
Dr. James Fiorica.
JF: Hospital-wide, as far as physicians go, we see group practices shrink. The doctors either are retiring earlier for various reasons—workload. We see people wanting to leave the community to join larger groups. The night call and the work call, they’re looking for groups that may have seven doctors or more so that they’re not on every night all night long, but they’re distributing that workload among other people. We’re feeling it. Each of the groups in town tend to be losing doctors slowly. We’ve seen a trend.
JW: The doctor shortage has affected other birth service providers, driving more births to the hospital, which, in turn, increased the pressure on remaining OB/GYNs. And recently, the hospital didn’t even have enough emergency “laborists” on hand.
But relief for patients is now under way in Sarasota, thanks to the creation of a network of 90 local providers that—as of now—is so informal and so new it has yet to get a name.
One of the instigators of this collaborative effort has been the Barancik Foundation. Vice President Kelly Romanoff explains how the partners got together and created an informal leadership council.
Kelly Romanoff: It really goes back to the spirit of partnership in that these relationships are in place—these are issues that we all care about that are core to our mission. It was very natural for us to come around the table in this self-organizing way when we knew that the constraints on our prenatal care system were occurring and for us all to say, “Hey, what can we do? Something needs to happen. Something needs to change.”
JW: A key element of the joint venture is centralized patient intake.
KR: One partnership and new way of working that we are piloting is a nurse-navigator who will be housed at Sarasota Memorial and will be the centralized point for patient intake. Nurses are so trusted. Nurses are among the most trusted healthcare professionals because they are the perfect blend of medical knowledge and human compassion. Patients often feel very comforted when they get to talk to a nurse. You can imagine that these moms—many of whom have no point of access to the medical system—are looking for care. When they’re able to call this nurse-navigator and then the nurse will say, “Okay, what are your needs? How far along are you? How are you feeling? Is there anything else that we can help you with beyond the medical care that you need?” That nurse will help them schedule appointments, will be responsible for following up with them to make sure that they’re taking care of themselves. But, really, where the partnership begins to happen is that the nurse can also refer them to our First 1,000 Days Suncoast program.
JW: Meanwhile, Sarasota Memorial is working hard to recruit OB/GYN doctors. Dr. Fiorica, the chief medical officer:
JF: We’ve actually added doctors for the hospital—for the deliveries—for many of the community patients we’ve added on. We now have OB hospitalists at Sarasota Memorial. We have eight of them on call on a regular basis to take care of obstetrical emergencies. In addition, we hired 11 PRN physicians to cover these extra patients from the community that don’t have someone to deliver their baby. That’s all in the last year, and that has nothing to do with the obstetrical practices in town.
JW: In addition to those “laborists,” the hospital is also helping affiliated group practices hire primary care obstetricians.
JF: Recently, we’ve been starting to increase our obstetrical groups. One of our groups in First Physicians Group is now a six-person obstetrical group and enlarging. Our other one is a four-person obstetrical group, and we’re recruiting for additional people for those groups to help the quality of life for those doctors so they get some home time in addition to work time.
JW: Also, the local Department of Health has restarted their OB/GYN services, hiring nurse practitioners and midwives.
One of the key providers in the coalition is a non-profit called First 1,000 Days Suncoast. More information at First1000DaysSuncoast.org. You can find a “get connected” tab there and complete a contact form, which will also take you to a nurse-navigator.
Other key partners include Sarasota Memorial Hospital, the Florida Department of Health’s Sarasota office, CenterPlace Health, MCR Health, Healthy Start Coalition, Sarasota Memorial Healthcare Foundation, Gulf Coast Community Foundation, and the Barancik Foundation.
Reporting for WSLR News, Johannes Werner.
WSLR News aims to keep the local community informed with our 1/2 hour local news show, quarterly newspaper and social media feeds. The local news broadcast airs on Wednesdays and Fridays at 6pm.