SPRING 2025

Step inside the Meckler Logistics Center at Sarasota Memorial, and it’s easy to see why visiting clinicians call it a “mini-NASA.” With screens aglow and real-time data constantly shifting, the space hums with purpose. This is where every patient movement—into, through, and out of the hospital—is orchestrated. At the helm is Susan Grimwood, DNP, APRN-C, Executive Director of Capacity, Logistics, and Patient Throughput. With clinical insight and systems savvy, she blends compassion with cutting-edge tech to keep SMH running smoothly.

Grimwood began her journey at Sarasota Memorial in 2001. By 2016, she had moved into system-wide work, focusing on how to help patients transition quickly and safely from one level of care to another. “When we started our capacity journey, I was promoted to director of logistics,” she explains. “We realized we needed a more efficient way to move patients through the entire system and do it without compromising care.”

Today, Grimwood’s role spans the entire health system, including SMH’s Sarasota and Venice campuses, two freestanding emergency departments and future expansions like the upcoming North Port hospital. “We manage all patient movement,” she says. “Whether someone is coming in through the ER, being transferred from another facility or heading home after surgery, logistics is involved every step of the way.”

That involvement is anything but passive. Grimwood and her team rely on predictive analytics, machine learning and real-time data to coordinate patient flow across departments and locations. “We look at census, demand, discharges, delays—every detail,” she notes. “The technology helps us identify low-hanging fruit, those places where we can make small but meaningful changes that really speed things up for the patient.”

The numbers tell the story. By streamlining patient movement, SMH has shaved nearly two hours off discharge times, greatly improved operating room start times and created the capacity equivalent of 77 inpatient beds per day. And that’s without constructing a single new room. Grimwood likes to say that they’re increasing capacity without brick and mortar, and that’s the magic of logistics done right.

But she’s quick to point out that no algorithm alone can drive results. “It’s people, process and culture,” she says. That includes strong collaboration with nursing, case management and every department involved in patient care. “Other hospitals might have the same software we do, but if you don’t have the right culture of collaboration and the right team working together across departments, it won’t make a difference.”

That difference has drawn attention far beyond Sarasota. Over the past year alone, more than 40 health systems from around the nation—and one from abroad, the United Kingdom’s National Health Service—have come to see the SMH model in action. “They want to know how we’re doing it,” Grimwood says. “It’s exciting to share what we’ve built and show that it’s replicable with the right people in place.”

That belief in culture extends to the very walls of the Meckler Logistics Center. Originally funded through a bequest from Herman and Lillian Meckler, the center has become a hub for innovation and impact. Philanthropy also helped launch SMH’s departure lounge, an area where patients can wait for rides, receive discharge instructions and transition out of care in comfort and dignity. Thanks to support from Jonathan and Michelle Mitchell, the Mitchell Family Departure Lounge alone has freed up dozens of beds per day.

Looking ahead, the logistics team is preparing to move into a new 3,000-square-foot space to accommodate the system’s growth. As SMH continues expanding services across the region, logistics will grow alongside it, quietly shaping each patient’s experience, one smooth transition at a time.

“We’re not just moving patients,” Grimwood says. “We’re creating space for care to happen, and making sure it happens the right way, every time.”