Highlands Regional Medical Center (Sebring)

Highlands Regional Medical Center (HRMC), serving Highlands County, Florida, is located at 3600 South Highlands Avenue, Sebring, Florida 33870. It is on the south side of Sebring.^[1]

History

HRMC was opened in 1965. The main hospital building has always been owned by Highlands County and run by Health Management Associates (HMA), a health care company based in Naples, Florida. Until 1997 HRMC and Walker Memorial Hospital, owned by Adventist Health System, roughly were even in the scope of health services each offered. The main building has been remodeled several times since opening and additional space has been added to the original building.

In 1997 Walker Memorial was closed when a new building was built to replace the old one. The new hospital, still under the same ownership and management, was named Florida Hospital Sebring and, later, Florida Hospital Heartland Medical Center (FHHMC). After that date, the scope and number of services provided by Florida Hospital expanded, while those of HRMC grew at a much slower rate.^[2]

At least twice HMA considered building a new hospital building, but nothing came of the plan.

Services

HRMC offers a number of services, both inside and outside the main building. Inside the main building are the mainstays of most hospitals, general patient wings, an emergency department, an intensive care unit and a maternity unit. Also, the hospital at least twice had a pediatrics unit. The pediatric unit was last open from 2006 to 2010. Various outpatient services are also housed in the main building. Three times the hospital has run a sleep center. The current one opened in 2009 and has two beds.^[3]

Outside of the main building, the largest entity of HRMC is Highlands Medical Group, which has physician offices in various locations to see patients. At least nine physicians see patients in Sebring at nine locations, most in the HRMC vicinity. One location is in Lake Placid, Florida, about 20 miles (32 km) south of the hospital building.

The hospital also has a rehabilitation clinic near the main building and Highlands Regional Wound Center is several miles south, just off US 27.^[4]

Ratings

Several websites post patient ratings of HRMC. However, these are few in number with little criteria. This makes comparing ratings from different sites very problematic. The Health Grades website provides an objective scale of twelve patient safety indicators. The ratings were professionally done and have three rating grades: worse, average and better. HRMC received a score of one worse, nine average and two better indicators^[5]

References