INDIAN RIVER COUNTY — Charlie Sheehan and Dr. George Mitchell enjoy an unusual relationship. They are colleagues, patient-doctor, and now linked by something more – a $1 million bequest from Sheehan to the hospital’s critical care department in honor of Mitchell.
Mitchell helped treat Sheehan for an illness that hospitalized him for about three weeks earlier this year.
The gift was unveiled Nov. 10 following a ground-breaking ceremony for the hospital’s new intensive care unit and recovery room.
It also coincided with a ceremony where Mitchell received the institution’s Rumas Sakalas Award for extraordinary dedication to his profession and the hospital.
“I really consider that he saved my life this past January,” said Sheehan. “I got out of the hospital and he called me every day for five or six weeks. His sense of responsibility is extraordinary.”
Every hospital, Sheehan said, needs people who are dedicated, demonstrate compassion and have a work ethic.
Ironically, Mitchell left the medical center in 2004 and went to Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville.
“I wanted to do more than what I was doing and I didn’t feel fulfilled,” he said, explaining why he left the medical center here. “I thought there was more for me professionally.”
There was, but Mitchell wouldn’t find it in Nashville.
Mitchell had been in Nashville about a week when Sheehan called, told him the hospital was going to develop a heart center in connection with Duke University.
“They told me they would work things out with Duke and we want you to be part of it,” Mitchell said.
Mitchell said Sheehan and hospital CEO Jeffrey Susi peppered him with repeated phone calls, urging him to come back to Vero.
“I told them I didn’t have to pack my bags because I hadn’t unpacked them,” he said. “What actually got me back was the genesis of the heart program. That sparked great interest because I love Vero.”
Sheehan, a former executive with General Electric, said the board agreed to go ahead with the heart center on the condition it affiliate with a center of excellence “because we didn’t want to screw it up.”
That’s where the Duke University connection began.
Five years after the heart center opened, Sheehan looks at the program’s success and said it extends beyond his wildest dreams.
“Duke is as proud of it as we are,” he said.
As for Mitchell, the heart center presented the professional challenge he wanted.
“It’s probably the most fulfilling professional decision I ever made,” he said later, sitting in his cramped, windowless office in the critical care center.
Strip away his white hospital smock and Mitchell could be mistaken for a Little League coach or an electrician.
A burly, balding man with a gray fringe of hair, he didn’t wait around for slaps on the back after receiving the Rumas Sakalas Award last week.
He quickly returned to the critical care unit to deal with a patient in distress.
“I usually don’t pay attention to awards,” said Mitchell, who added he felt honored to receive it. “I just do my job and try to saves people’s lives.”
Since returning to Vero and with the Heart Center now in its fifth year, Mitchell said he now sees the hospital evolving at lightning speed.
Asked for an example of that, Mitchell noted the cardiac program is conducting heart operations with minimal incisions.
Mitchell, almost like a populist politician on the stump, rapidly rattles off more examples.
“The individuals they attract,” he said. “That’s what makes an institution. The critical care nursing staff, they are the best in the business. The respiratory therapists, they are the best in nation.
“We are like Mayberry,” he said with a nod to the fictional hometown of the Andy Griffin Show. “And you have this gem of a medical institution. Who would have ever thought of that 10 years ago? Everywhere you look in this hospital you shine.
“Take the heart team,” he said. “When a patient isn’t doing well, the entire team is at the bedside. They don’t go home. They miss meals because they are at the bedside. They do that because they care about the patients.”
From the heart team, Mitchell shifts focus to the administration and his enthusiasm level doesn’t dip.
“They don’t just ask how much it costs,” he said. “They ask if it helps some patients. If it’s good for the patients, we’re going to do it. If it’s not good for patients we’re not going to do it.”
“The administration gives us what we need to save lives,” he added. “There are very few community hospitals in the country that serve at the level this hospital does,” Mitchell said.
The doctor stopped for a moment when asked if he is humbled by Sheehan’s generosity in his name.
“It would have been an honor just for a dollar,” he said. “He’s a very principled individual. In today’s economy, people don’t want to give you a nickel never mind a million dollars. It is a great gesture.”
Sheehan, who retired in 1991, saw the medical center’s tremendous growth as its board chairman and benefitted from that growth and expertise as a patient earlier this year.
“What I see now are the fruits of a lot of seeds sown when I was on the board,” he said, noting he got involved with the medical center when his wife, Susan, noticed a newspaper story where the hospital wanted people to get involved in a governance committee.
Sheehan ended up spending seven years on the board and donated $500,000 to the hospital to create its reflecting pond, a donation he gave as a Christmas present to his wife.
Although no longer serving in any official capacity in Vero, Sheehan is chairman of the foundation board at Highlands Cashiers Hospital in North Carolina where he has a summer home.
For his part, Sheehan said he really wants his money to provide for patients’ intensive care.
How his bequest is spent will be determined by the critical care director, the job Mitchell now holds.
As a bequest, the hospital won’t receive the Sheehans’ $1 million contribution until the couple passes on, a fact not lost on the donor.
“Hopefully, they won’t see it for a long time,” he said with a smile.
PHOTOS: Major donors Lorne and Heidi Waxlax and Debra and Champ Sheridan are joined by others in a ceremonial groundbreaking for the Indian River Medical Center’s new Sheridan Intensive Care Unit and Waxlax Recovery Room. Photos by Tom McCarth y Jr.
Hospital breaks ground on $15 million intensive care unit /recovery area
The Indian River Medical Center last week started construction on its $15-million Sheridan intensive care unit and Waxlax recovery room.
Work on the 14-bed intensive care unit and the 27-bed recovery room should be completed by late next year, according to hospital spokeswoman Betsy Whisman.
The ground breaking coincided with the fifth anniversary celebration of the hospital’s Heart Center and featured about 300 heart surgery patients who have been treated at the center.