Health care, or perceived lack of available health care, has in years past been a barrier to many who would otherwise consider Florida’s Forgotten Coast for retirement or year ‘round residency. Happily, the situation for residents of Apalachicola, St. George Island, Eastpoint, Carrabelle, Lanark Village, Cape San Blas, Port St. Joe and others on the Forgotten Coast is rapidly and favorably changing.
Weems Memorial Hospital, a 25-bed facility with 24-hour emergency service in Apalachicola, formed a clinical affiliation with Tallahassee Memorial Hospital in 2008. Weems especially benefits from TMH’s professional growth and development programs because the same “best practices” utilized at TMH are being brought to the staff and patients of Weems. Among the many recent positive changes is the addition of an endoscopic unit and noted gastroenterologist James W. Stockwell, MD, founder of the Digestive Disease Clinic in Tallahassee, who now performs colonoscopies at Weems weekly. Other services now available locally include mammography, physical and respiratory therapy, a sleep clinic, and the ability to perform as many as sixty different kinds of lab tests – all services that far exceed what other rural hospitals are able to provide.
A new Urgent Care Clinic, Weems Medical Center East, is currently under construction in Carrabelle and is operating temporarily in the former Carrabelle High School building. The new building will have approximately 5,000 square feet and will house two physicians’ offices, five examining rooms, and areas for radiology and laboratories.
In Port St. Joe, the new Sacred Heart Hospital on the Gulf opened in March, 2010. The new 25-bed hospital is part of Sacred Heart Health System in Pensacola, and is part of Ascension Health, the nation’s largest Catholic and nonprofit health system. It features a 24-hour emergency department, inpatient services, surgical services, a full complement of diagnostic, imaging and laboratory services, and a helipad to provide rapid transport for trauma or critically ill patients. A new medical office complex near the hospital is under construction and expected to open in Summer, 2010, offering mammography, ultrasound, speech and physical therapy, dialysis services, and primary and specialty physician services.
For additional information about the rapidly improving health services and benefits on the Forgotten Coast, visit:
Weems Memorial Hospital: http://www.weemsmemorial.com/
Weems Medical Center East: http://www.weemsmemorial.com/carrabelle-clinic.aspx
Sacred Heart on the Gulf: http://www.sacred-heart.org/gulf/
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