New York City-based Hospital for Special Surgery, which recently opened HSS at NCH in Naples, Fla., is well-positioned to deepen collaborations and strengthen patient outcomes, Sheeraz Qureshi, MD, said.
Dr. Qureshi, chief medical officer of HSS Florida, spoke with Becker’s about the most exciting opportunities with the facility and in the state.
Note: This conversation was lightly edited for clarity.
Question: What’s the most exciting opportunity for you at HSS at NCH?
Dr. Sheeraz Qureshi: I think there’s a couple of things. What we’re trying to bring to the area is going beyond just treating a condition, but treating the whole person as far as their musculoskeletal health goes. The most exciting thing is that we’re not just going to be blending into the existing buildings, but we’re going to have a great shared space that is going to represent the two entities at the Patty and Jay Baker pavilion. This embodies the philosophy, because it has well-being at its core, and is state of the art in terms of operating rooms. But there’s also advanced imaging suites. There’s motion analysis technology. There’s the highest level of physical therapy. NCH is such a great representation of healthcare in southwest Florida, and HSS which is the number one place for musculoskeletal care in the world. Coming together, and having a physical space to deliver that level of care for the whole patient is really exciting.
Q: Can you talk about any interesting collaborations you’ve been doing with NCH now that you’re together?
SQ: The biggest thing is that we’re bringing the highest level of physicians, both surgical and non surgical when it comes to musculoskeletal care. There are people that have come from around the country and around the world not only because they want to be in southwest Florida, but because they want to be a part of HSS. It’s interesting to me that they want to be a part of HSS, but they really didn’t want to be in New York and only wanted to come because of HSS at NCH. So it’s the perfect mix.
That is something that could only happen with collaboration. Beyond that, I think bringing together a state of the art building, which houses an ASC and an inpatient hospital next door allows for a level of safety especially as we’re doing less invasive procedures that are meant to be outpatient but don’t quite work out for any number of reasons. In most places with an ASC, if somebody can’t go home that means we have to find an ambulance and take them. Here, we’re bringing it all together, and that is something that you know is truly unique and something that is really only able to be delivered because of the collaboration.
Q: What are some of your goals as a leader in the second half of 2025?
SQ: HSS opened our Florida doors in 2020, and the vision was to bring that same level of excellence here. But part of the strategic growth across Florida for HSS was trying to find really great partners that have the same values that we do, and that’s what brought us to NCH. What we’re going to be doing in 2025 and beyond, specifically with NCH, is really prove the concept that you can bring two great institutions together. And by doing that you can bring something to patients and people of that region that they wouldn’t otherwise have access.
Q: And how are things going with the spine service at your New York City headquarters?
SQ: There’s a lot of exciting things happening on the spine service. We consider ourselves a unified spine service, not only in New York, but across everywhere where HSS delivers care. Our sort of next steps are to really bring together a multi disciplinary spine program that goes beyond just the surgical service. Obviously surgery is in our name Hospital for Special Surgery, and most people think about spine surgery. But what we want to do through the creation of a multidisciplinary spine program is really make it easy for patients, whether they have a day of back pain or need the most complex spine surgery, to get easy access and get the right person to the right doctor who’s going to be able to give them the best care.
