Shipley Cardiothoracic Center at Lee Health

Homer Jones: The moment I come in this place, I knew I was going to be okay.

Paul Digiorgi: The Shipley Center is really taking patient-centered care to a whole different level.

Rafael Ortiz: I started getting burning in my chest, ended up in the ER twice, and then I needed heart surgery.

Homer Jones: When Dr. Digiorgi told me that there was a mass on my lung and it's got to come out, my heart sunk.

Paul Digiorgi: We're talking about destination. People are looking for a final solution to their problems and so the way those typically work when people refer to a tertiary center or a destination center is patients are evaluated locally wherever they are and they're deemed to be usually too complex or too high risk for an operation. So patients will come in for days or weeks even, and be tuned up ahead of time for surgery, for whatever issues they might have. We work to get them tuned up so that when it comes time to go to the operating room, their risk is lower.

Brian Hummel: We're involved in current valve trials that we think are really going to set the standard for cardiac care and surgical care for patients, not just for our patients, but nationally and worldwide.

Michael Defrain: It's kind of the cornerstones of the Shipley Center in terms of innovation, research and education. I think that's what sets us apart. I think in each one of those little worlds, we have tentacles out into the community, which help amplify those different realms.

Paul Digiorgi: When you come to this hospital, I can assure you that anybody who's going to be operating on you, is someone who I'd have operate on me, and that's a very important thing. You can't find that in every program and every hospital.

Rafael Ortiz: Tomorrow will be 30 days since my discharge. This place is fantastic. Dr. Digiorgi and Dr. Hummel are fantastic. I wouldn't go to anybody else. I knew their reputation before I came here and it's just reassuring. It's comforting. And its kind of calming knowing that I was going to be in good hands.

Brian Hummel: As a patient, if I were to come in here, you immediately feel at ease and you feel like you're getting the best of everything.

Randall Buss: The entire cardiothoracic surgery care is a team approach. I think that's the most important. We may be captain of the team, but other people are just as important to us. We have physician assistants working with us in the office and in the operating room, we have nursing personnel in our office, in the intensive care unit, in the [inaudible 00:02:40] patients, and we have the cardiologist working with us. It's all a team approach.

Paul Digiorgi: In today's day and age in medicine, life and death can often mean the expertise of a single surgeon or a single hospital. And when you have a hospital in your backyard and you're ill, you want to make sure it's as good as possible. So it really is very important to invest in the health care around you because you may very well be the recipient of some of that care at some point in the future

Michael Defrain: The most important thing is taking care of every individual and their families to the best of our ability. All of the things that we do here really are focused on that.

Brian Hummel: We have lots of stories of grateful patients, and we never turn anybody away whether they can pay or not pay. That's not part of the equation that goes into what we want to provide for care.

Homer Jones: As far as I'm concerned, my heart hit this place and this is where you should go without a doubt. Why would you want to go any place else? Why, please tell me, would you go any place else?