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Community Pillar TMH Expands Reach
Community Asset, Regional Resource
Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare expands its area of influence
By Emma Witmer
Recently named among the top 25 hospitals in Florida by U.S. News & World Report, Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare (TMH) is the Capital City’s oldest remaining hospital and the only private, not-for-profit health care system in town.
These factors, said president and CEO of TMH Mark O’Bryant, uniquely position TMH to address the needs of its ever-growing service area. Today, TMH serves a 21-county area in North Florida, South Georgia and South Alabama, with a broad list of care options to address acute, long-term and chronic ailments and injuries.
More than 5,500 staff members support TMH’s numerous care facilities including its 772-bed acute care hospital, surgery and adult ICU center, psychiatric hospital, multiple specialty care centers, three residency programs, 38 affiliated physician practices and partnerships.
Throughout its nearly 75 years in operation, TMH has been at the forefront of medical advancement for the region. TMH provided the city’s first ambulance, blood bank, neonatal intensive care unit and stand-alone emergency center. Today, O’Bryant and his team continue to push the envelope by listening to the needs of the community, investing in quality care and training the next generation of skilled health care professionals.
In that spirit, TMH launched a new, larger urology clinic on Centennial Boulevard in August of 2022 to provide more timely care for a wide variety of urological conditions, including cancer.
“Urology is an area where our medical community has expressed interest in having access to new services,” O’Bryant said. “We started with Dr. Charles Yowell years ago, and he became busy very quickly, so we added a second urologist.” O’Bryant said there has since been a third and fourth added, and a fifth and sixth are scheduled to come in 2023.
Alongside its expansion of urology care, TMH has laid out a multi-year plan to drastically increase its capacity for cancer care. The first step in this process, slated for completion at the start of 2023, will include the addition of 13 exam rooms and additional space for infusion therapy and lab services. This move will directly impact two of TMH’s three existing outpatient oncology clinics; gynecologic oncology; and cancer and hematology.
Roughly 12 years ago, TMH identified a growing need for local providers and set out to create a pipeline through Tallahassee Community College (TCC).
“We partnered with TCC by giving them the land to build a facility on our campus so their nursing students wouldn’t have to drive all across town,” O’Bryant said. “It’s a way for us to not only bring students to our campus, but it has also allowed us to expand. TCC has expanded their nursing program significantly, even recently. That helps all of us.”
Now, TMH is taking that success and translating it into the hospital’s longstanding relationship with Florida State University (FSU). In June of 2020, TMH
Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare Tallahassee Memorial Healthcare
announced plans to develop a new academic medical center that will create greater instructional opportunities for medical school residents working with TMH and serve as Tallahassee’s newest hub of medical research. The project will be funded by a $125 million investment from the state of Florida.
TMH’s continued growth is quickly positioning the hospital as the primary medical hub in the region. The hospital recently acquired a campusbased emergency helicopter through a partnership with Survival Flight, a move that O’Bryant said will allow TMH to better serve its adjacent, more rural communities in the most critical moments after a medical emergency.
Announced in early 2022, TMH is partnering with FSU and The St. Joe Company to develop a 100-bed hospital in Panama City Beach to serve the residents of Latitude Watersound, a recently developed community geared toward people aged 55 and older. This partnership bore its first fruit in September of 2022 with the opening of TMH Physician Partners — Primary Care in Panama City Beach. The hospital is projected to open in the coming years.
Even as THM looks to increase services to its outlying communities, O’Bryant said the hospital is also looking at ways to improve affordable access to care close to home. Planning is currently in the works to build two new urgent care centers, one in the area of Frenchtown and one in Crawfordville.
“A lot of people use emergency rooms as their entry point to health care even though, quite frankly, the services they require are not what we would consider urgent,” O’Bryant said. “ERs are very busy, very expensive places to receive care. We are trying to create access points that allow people to receive more immediate care at a much lower cost point.”
TMH urologists (from left to right): James Farrell, DO; Francisco Carpio, M.D.; Charles Yowell, M.D.; and Anthony Vara, M.D.
