Sheeraz Qureshi, MD, MBA, who was recently named chief medical officer of Hospital for Special Surgery's Florida division, wants to prioritize a consistent culture across the system's Northeast and Southern presences.
Dr. Qureshi, who is also co-chief of HSS Spine, spoke with Becker's about his vision for HSS Florida's future.
Note: This conversation was lightly edited for clarity.
Question: What are your top goals going into your new role?
Dr. Sheeraz Qureshi: Florida's a really important part of the future of our organization as a whole. And as HHS has grown, the thought was that that role currently fell under the role of the surgeon in chief. But there's so many responsibilities that the surgeon in chief at HSS has that there's been a delegation of some of these roles.
There's an opportunity to work closely with our CEO in Florida and just think about an important part of the future of the organization. And our goal is really to help improve connectivity and help improve some of our processes to make sure that we are able to deliver the same quality of care throughout the organization. What's amazing is we have really amazing doctors, and just making Florida feel like it is an extension of the main campus is really, I think, the primary role for me.
Q: What goes into that process of making HSS Florida feel like HHS based in New York? What are big challenges?
SQ: The biggest challenge whenever organizations grow, especially geographically, is how to maintain the culture? The most important thing that we're starting with there is that we have really great doctors. We have amazing people in leadership positions there both from the medical side and with regards to our executive team. One of the things that we have put importance on for a variety of reasons is really making sure that the service chiefs in New York, who are responsible for recruitment and service growth there also have a really significant role in recruitment and growth in Florida, and tying that with the needs of the locals. I think everybody's got a great attitude about it. Everybody's on the same page, so I'm really optimistic. My part in that is making sure that I'm communicating the needs of our team in Florida to make sure that they have the resources available that they need for the work.
Q: Are there any other office expansions you can talk about yet?
SQ: West Palm Beach is our anchor on the east coast of Florida and that's been open since 2020. We have a partnership there through an ambulatory surgery center and a hospital so we're able to provide both inpatient and outpatient care there, and we have a really strong team. Our venture that we're building right now is on the west coast in Naples, which is a joint venture with Naples Community Hospital, which will also have the ability to imprint our quality and our processes, both on the inpatient and outpatient side.
Q: What do you think makes Florida particularly ripe for orthopedic growth?
SQ: Florida in general is, from a demographic perspective, a really fast-growing state. Historically, I think Florida has been thought of as primarily a place where you go and you retire. Since the pandemic, the demographics in Florida have changed a lot, and it was a natural extension for us because a lot of the people that really care about HHS or closely involved with HHS happen to spend a lot of time in Florida as well. That's not a reason to necessarily expand somewhere, but certainly I think leveraging that made the opportunity even more attractive. Ultimately in terms of what we do — being able to go into a market that I think is still considered to be somewhat fragmented when it comes to orthopedic care and trying to deliver a map around how to elevate quality by providing something at scale across the state was the real opportunity that we saw.
Q: How are you thinking about competition with other orthopedic groups in the state?
SQ: My perspective on it has always been that it's always better to work together than to try to be in competition. I think we can learn a lot from other groups both on what they've done right and what they've felt in retrospect that they could do better. Whenever we go into a new place we're not coming in with an arrogance of: "We know how to do it, and we can do it better." We're really coming in from a place of: "Here's what we think we could bring in terms of our value and based on what the environment is that we're entering." We understand that there's a lot of really good physicians working really hard at providing good care, and we just want to be a part of that.