Working Here

UF Health Neuromedicine includes one of the largest complements of neurologists and neurosurgeons in the country who have pioneered leading-edge treatments in neuromedicine. At the UF Health Neuromedicine Hospital, patients enjoy streamlined access to highly specialized, comprehensive outpatient treatment options and inpatient services in one location for neurological conditions. They also benefit from outstanding UF Health physicians and clinical experts collaborating in an excellent facility, which boasts seven neuromedicine operating room suites complete with intraoperative MRI capabilities, a 48-bed neuromedicine medical/surgical unit and a dedicated 48-bed dedicated neurointensive care unit.

Our team is dedicated to providing technically superb, compassionate and timely medical care for our patients. Centers of excellence include the Preston A. Wells Jr. Center for Brain Tumor Therapy; the UF Health Comprehensive Stroke Center; the UF Health Comprehensive Spine Center, a Blue Cross/Blue Shield Blue Distinction® Center for Spine Surgery; the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center; the Level 4 Epilepsy Program, designated by the National Association of Epilepsy Centers; and the Movement Disorders Program at the Norman Fixel Institute for Neurological Diseases at UF Health.

The UF Health Heart and Vascular Care program boasts a team of board-certified and fellowship-trained cardiologists, cardiovascular surgeons and vascular surgeons who work side by side to care for patients with cardiac, thoracic and vascular conditions. We have become the Southeast’s destination for treating the most complicated heart valve conditions, offering minimally invasive surgical options that lead to better results and faster recovery. From performing Florida’s first cardiac catheterization and open-heart surgeries in the 1950s to delivering the world’s first combined heart and bone marrow stem cell therapy in 2016, our program continues to set clinical, educational and research milestones in the state, nation and beyond.

The UF Health Heart & Vascular Hospital fuses the latest medical technology with design and amenities that promote healing and recovery to optimize the patient experience. This facility includes:

• Three hybrid heart and vascular operating rooms, featuring flexible diagnostic and surgical set-ups, which enable surgical teams to accommodate several different procedures simultaneously.
• 72 private intensive care units, equipped with patient lifts, bedside dialysis and surgical procedure lights to lessen the need to move patients, as well as accommodations for family; 48 medical/surgical private inpatient rooms with accommodations for family.
• Combined outpatient practice space with 20 exam rooms where cardiologists, thoracic surgeons, cardiac surgeons and vascular surgeons provide patients with evaluations, diagnoses and follow-up appointments.
• Two cardiac catheterization labs.
• A heart station featuring four vascular rooms; six echocardiogram, or EKG, rooms; two transesophageal echocardiogram, or TEE, rooms; and one EKG/Holter room.
• A thoracic and vascular intensive care unit for patients recovering from lung transplants and those needing artificial lung support. This specialized ICU provides advantages, including the opportunity to walk about while receiving support from an artificial lung machine or getting out of bed the day after a lung transplant.
• UF Health has the best lung transplant outcomes in the nation as reported by the Scientific Registry for Transplant Recipients. Our program tops the list as the best in the United States for one-year, risk-adjusted survival rates. As of January 2021, the program’s one-year postoperative survival rate is 98%, almost 10% higher than the national average. Similarly, the waitlist mortality rate is 4%, versus the national average of 18%, and boasts an average of 1.2 months of time to transplant.

The UF Health Cancer Center offers a comprehensive care model with 12 multidisciplinary cancer programs featuring advanced treatment options, such as chemotherapy, minimally invasive surgery, robotic surgery, radiotherapy and participation in clinical trials. Our UF Health cancer experts work to ensure coordinated care is available to each patient through diagnosis, treatment and recovery across our outpatient practices and inpatient settings. The UF Health Shands Cancer Hospital is a dedicated 500,000-square-foot facility offering advanced resources for a wide range of oncology, surgery, critical care, emergency and trauma patients. The cancer hospital serves adult inpatients for a wide variety of cancer diagnoses from all over the state and includes a robust bone marrow transplantation unit.

As an academic health center, our clinician scientists participate in research that has a direct impact on improved patient outcomes and access to the very latest cancer-killing technologies and drugs.

• The UF Health Cancer Center is the only state-designated Cancer Center of Excellence in North Central Florida.
• The patient outcomes of the UF Health Blood and Marrow Transplantation Program are ranked among the top 2.5% nationwide.
• The UF Health Breast Center is accredited by the National Accreditation Program for Breast Centers and is the first in the state to offer intraoperative radiation therapy using INTRABEAM®.
• In 2017, the UF Health Cancer Center joined the National Cancer Institute’s Experimental Therapeutics Clinical Trial Network — an exclusive national network that will give UF Health cancer patients access to leading-edge clinical trials.
• The UF Health Cancer Center is one of 12 initial clinical trial sites participating in Precision Promise, the first large-scale precision medicine trial designed to transform outcomes for patients with pancreatic cancer.

UF Health Shands Children’s Hospital is recognized as one of the nation’s best hospitals for children, according to the 2021-22 U.S. News & World Report rankings. As a hospital-within-a-hospital on the UF Health Shands Hospital campus in Gainesville, Florida, we offer care in more than 20 pediatric specialties and house the area’s first pediatric emergency room. The hospital serves children in our community and throughout Florida and is a destination center for pediatric patients from all over the country and overseas who require specialized attention for complex medical problems. It represents the only quaternary care academic pediatric center in North Central Florida.

Our faculty has served on several first-in-human clinical trials, including those that use novel approaches to stimulate immune responses against malignant brain tumor cells in combination with current standard treatments. In addition to the treatment provided at the children’s hospital and our pediatric specialty outpatient practices throughout North Central Florida, we also have four pediatric primary care locations in Gainesville and one in Ocala, Florida. In the recent year, we expanded our telehealth capabilities, and we will continue to grow our regional outreach to make access to quality care more convenient for our patients.

Part of UF Health Shands Children’s Hospital, the UF Health Congenital Heart Center has established itself as a national leader in pediatric cardiology and heart surgery, which is ranked No. 7 in the nation and is the highest-ranked program of its kind in Florida. And, as part of the largest heart transplant program in Florida and one of the largest in the southeastern United States, the UF Health Congenital Heart Center continues to have outstanding outcomes and exceeds national survival rates.

The UF Health Transplant Program has over 50 years of experience providing life-saving treatments to patients around the world. As an industry leader in transplant medicine, our teams use a coordinated approach to care with over 100 staff members dedicated to assisting our patients and their families through every phase of the transplant journey — from pre-transplant to lifelong post-transplant care. These team members include physicians, surgeons, nurses, financial coordinators, donor coordinators, administrative support staff, social workers, physical and respiratory therapists and psychologists all working together to provide patients with the best transplant experience possible. 2016 marked 50 years of excellence in transplantation at UF Health.

Since June 25, 1966, when we performed the state of Florida’s first kidney transplant, UF Health has been an industry leader in transplant medicine, and its staff has provided unparalleled expertise in highly complex, life-saving treatments for patients around the world.

At our Level I UF Health Shands Trauma Center, we treated more than 4,000 patients in 2020. UF Health ShandsCair is the critical care transport system of UF Health in Gainesville and has transported patients from all 67 Florida counties and from across the Southeast. ShandsCair supports patient care during transport, using specialized teams, vehicles and equipment in a safe, cost-effective manner with the goal of improving patient outcomes. ShandsCair transports patients around the clock from prehospital scenes by way of a fixed-wing aircraft, five helicopters, six ground ambulances and a medical discharge van. The ShandsCair helicopters transport patients from prehospital scenes within a 75-mile radius and community hospital emergency rooms and intensive care units within a 240-mile radius, including domestic and international access.

• UF Health Shands Hospital ranks among the nation’s best in nine specialties in the 2020-21 U.S. News & World Report “Best Hospitals” survey. No other Florida hospital has more than nine adult specialties ranked in the nation’s top 50. UF Health Shands Hospital is ranked the number one hospital in Florida with its highest national rankings coming in geriatrics; nephrology; ear, nose and throat; pulmonology and lung surgery; and urology. UF Health Shands Hospital also was listed as “high performing” in seven specialties, including abdominal aortic aneurysm repair, colon cancer surgery, hip replacement, knee replacement, lung cancer surgery, heart failure and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD.
• The University of Florida Health Shands Children’s Hospital is ranked the number one children’s hospital in Florida, one of the top five in the southeastern U.S., and among the nation’s best pediatric hospitals in eight medical specialties, according to the 2021-22 Best Children’s Hospitals rankings released by U.S. News & World Report: pediatric cardiology and heart surgery (7th), diabetes and endocrinology (12th), pulmonology (21st), cancer (45th), neurology & neurosurgery (45th), urology (46th), neonatology (47th) and nephrology (48th).

In summer 2018, UF Health Shands hospitals and programs achieved a fourth consecutive Magnet designation by the American Nurses Credentialing Center, or ANCC — the profession’s top recognition for quality patient outcomes and nursing excellence. Only 8% of hospitals and health systems nationwide have received Magnet designation, and only 41 out of 500 hospitals have four consecutive awards.

• UF Health ranks number 12 on the Forbes list of Florida’s 100 best workplaces and number 50 in the nation for female workers. The statewide Forbes list is based on surveys of more than 80,000 people who worked for companies with at least 500 employees. The surveys were conducted between October 2019 and May 2020. The Forbes list of best workplaces for women surveyed 75,000 people, including 45,000 women, at companies with more than 1,000 workers. They were queried in March and April.
• UF Health Shands Hospital was included in Indeed’s list of the 2019 “Top-Rated Workplaces” for hospitals, which recognizes the 25 “Best Hospitals” in the U.S. We are number 20.

• In 2020, UF Health Shands Hospital was listed among the Becker’s Healthcare list of 100 Great Hospitals in America. The organizations included are nationally recognized for excellence in clinical care, patient outcomes and staff and physician satisfaction, as well as patient satisfaction and industry innovation.
• UF Health Shands Hospital was named to the 2020 Fortune/IBM Watson Health 100 Top Hospitals list, the only health system in the southeastern U.S. in the “major teaching hospital” division of the Fortune/IBM Watson Health top 100 list. Hospitals on that list had better results on a wide array of indicators, including mortality, length of stay, patient experience, clinical outcomes and infections.

The UF Health Shands Hospital lung transplant program tops the list as the best in the United States for one-year risk-adjusted survival rates, according to the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients, or SRTR.

SRTR annually evaluates transplant programs around the country for metrics whose importance to transplant candidates are intuitive: how many reach the one-year post-transplant survival mark, how quickly they can get a transplant and survival rates while on the wait list.

In 2021, the UF Health Cancer Center was once again recognized as a state-designated Cancer Center of Excellence by the Florida governor’s office and the Florida Department of Health. The designation by the Florida Legislature recognizes hospitals and treatment centers that demonstrate excellence in patient-centered, coordinated care for people undergoing cancer treatment and chemotherapy.

This is the Cancer Center’s third consecutive designation.

In recognition for its achievement and innovation in health care sustainability, UF Health Shands Hospital received the 2020 Greenhealth Partner for Change Award and the 2020 Greening the OR Recognition Award from Practice Greenhealth, the nation’s leading organization dedicated to environmental sustainability in health care.

UF Health Shands Hospital currently has three nursing care units with active Beacon Awards for Excellence issued by the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses: the Pediatric ICU (gold), the Trauma/Lung Transplant Unit (gold) and the Post Anesthesia Care Unit (silver).

A Beacon Award — recognized at a gold, silver or bronze level — is a three-year designation that recognizes nursing teams that meet national criteria consistent with Magnet recognition by the American Nurses Credentialing Center, the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award and the National Quality Healthcare Award. The award identifies individual nursing units that promote healthy work environments conducive to collaboration and that collect and use evidence-based research to improve patient outcomes, patient and staff satisfaction and credibility. Beacon Award criteria include leadership structures and systems; appropriate staffing and staff engagement; effective communication, knowledge management, learning and development; and evidence-based practices and processes.

The UF Health Rehab Hospital, an alliance between Select Medical and UF Health, was recognized as the Best Physical Rehabilitation Center in Florida by Newsweek magazine, which partnered with the global market research firm Statista Inc. in its first ranking of the country’s top facilities for rehabilitation care.

Newsweek’s rankings were based on quality of care, service, follow-up care, accommodations and amenities relative to in-state competition. The rankings list the top facilities in the 20 states with the highest number of physical rehabilitation centers, according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, or CMS.