{"id":66638,"date":"2025-12-01T16:28:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-01T16:28:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/66638\/"},"modified":"2025-12-01T16:28:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-01T16:28:08","slug":"celebrating-the-first-anniversary-as-a-community-focused-private-nonprofit-health-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/66638\/","title":{"rendered":"Celebrating the first anniversary as a community-focused private nonprofit health system"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\t\t Open Audio Article Player<\/a> \t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n BY LARRY ANTONUCCI<\/a>
CEO, Lee Health M.D., MBA\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

Lee Health, Lee Memorial Hospital. -COURTESY PHOTO<\/p>\n

Starting at the end of 2023 and throughout 2024, Lee Health completed a thoughtful, multi-phase process to become a community-focused private nonprofit health system. This new structure took effect on Nov. 1, 2024. As we marked the first anniversary of this important milestone, we\u2019ve been reflecting on a successful transition\u2014one that positions us to expand services, invest in new technology and introduce innovative approaches to care.\n<\/p>\n

At the time of our conversion, we made clear commitments to our patients, neighbors, and partners. Today, we are proud to have kept those promises. Here are a few of the key commitments we made and have delivered on for our community:\n<\/p>\n

We pledged to preserve our safety-net status, maintain essential services, and ensure no burden would fall on taxpayers. In 2025, those promises have not only been kept\u2014they\u2019ve been strengthened.
\nLee Health continues to provide care regardless of a patient\u2019s ability to pay. Preliminary figures show that we have provided approximately $168 million in charity care over the past year. This unwavering commitment ensures that underserved populations in Southwest Florida receive the care they need and deserve.
\nWe promised to\u00a0maintain access to programs and services\u00a0essential to our community\u2019s healthcare. We did and we launched new initiatives, like community paramedicine, Hospital at Home, and expanded cancer and orthopedic services\u2014laying the groundwork for major future expansions.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Larry Antonucci, CEO, Lee Health M.D., MBA. -COURTESY PHOTO<\/p>\n

We promised to maintain\u00a0local control and ownership,\u00a0and we have. Lee Health remains proudly independent and locally governed, with an expanded Board of Directors bringing recognized expertise in healthcare and governance.<\/p>\n

We promised to\u00a0improve quality, care coordination and strengthen partnerships with physicians. This year, we established a physician advisory board committee that includes both independent and employed physicians, and we achieved all-time high engagement scores among employed physicians.<\/p>\n

These are just a few examples of the promises we made \u2014 and kept \u2014 over the past year. For a full picture of our community commitments and highlights from fiscal year 2025, visit tinyurl.com\/LHConversionAnniversary<\/a>.\n\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open Audio Article Player BY LARRY ANTONUCCICEO, Lee Health M.D., MBA Lee Health, Lee Memorial Hospital. -COURTESY PHOTO…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":66639,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[209,211,210],"class_list":["post-66638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral-headlines","tag-cape-coral-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66638\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}