Author Archive

Special to The Gainesville Sun, February 21, 2012
Imagine you learned last year that you had a life-threatening allergy to a common medication. This year you arrive in an emergency room, unconscious, and the medication you’re allergic to is a common treatment option.

If the doctors treating you do not have access to your medical records, then they might give you the drug you’re allergic to. If your doctors do have access, they could make an informed choice—preventing harm to you.

That’s the point of allowing health […]

Business Report, North Central Florida

The University of Florida may be the face of Gainesville, but health care is its economic backbone.

When Dr. Kenneth Berns arrived in Gainesville in 1976, health care was like a teenager showing lots of promise but still finding itself.

Alachua County Hospital had just moved into a new cornerstone building a year earlier. The 480-bed Veterans Administration Hospital was only nine years old. North Florida Regional Medical Center, founded in 1972, was just getting off the ground.

And the 465-bed Shands Teaching Hospital? […]