Bayfront Medical Center is a hospital in St. Petersburg, Florida. Bayfront Medical Center is Pinellas County's only trauma center and St. Petersburg's longest-standing hospital.
Bayfront is a not-for-profit teaching hospital that provides comprehensive services in trauma and emergency care; orthopaedics; obstetrics and gynecology; cardiology; neurosciences; sports medicine; surgery and rehabilitation. More than 550 physicians are on staff with specialties ranging from open-heart surgery to fertility treatment.
It is also home to Bayflite, an air medical helicopter transport program. Bayflite, the largest hospital-based flight program in the Southeastern United States, was started more than two decades ago and the first flight program in Florida that carried lifesaving blood on every flight.
Bayfront is nationally accredited by the Joint Commission and also maintains the following accreditations and certifications: Level II Trauma Center, Level III Regional Perinatal Intensive Care Center, Primary Stroke Center, Chest Pain Center and Hip & Knee Replacement.
Bayfront was originally organized as the St. Petersburg Sanitarium in 1906, and over the next six decades re-designated as the Good Samaritan Hospital, Augusta Memorial Hospital, City Hospital, Mound Park Hospital, and finally, in 1968, Bayfront Medical Center. It was the first to integrate, and the first African-American patient, Altamese Chapman, was a longtime Bayfront volunteer.
Bayfront, in its Mound Park Hospital form, was mentioned in the Ian Fleming 007 novel "Live and Let Die".
In October 2012, plans were announced to merge Bayfront Medical Center with Health Management Associates and Shands HealthCare. The merger will transform Bayfront Medical Center into a for-profit facility and create a new integrated care delivery network with six other HMA hospitals, including Brooksville Regional Hospital, Spring Hill Regional Hospital, Venice Regional Medical Center, Charlotte Regional Medical Center, Peace River Regional Medical Center, and Pasco Regional Medical Center, with Bayfront being the flagship hospital.
Famous quotes containing the words medical and/or center:
“Every day our garments become more assimilated to ourselves, receiving the impress of the wearer’s character, until we hesitate to lay them aside without such delay and medical appliances and some such solemnity even as our bodies.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The question of whether it’s God’s green earth is not at center stage, except in the sense that if so, one is reminded with some regularity that He may be dying.”
—Edward Hoagland (b. 1932)