LeeSar vital cog in healthcare machine
BY PETE SKIBA Florida Weekly Correspondent

PHOTO FLORIDA WEEKLY LeeSar's Chief Financial Officer Gayle Reynolds

Like the stagehands in the theater getting no applause from audiences, many businesses contribute to hospital healthcare and receive no recognition.

LeeSar, a healthcare supplies management company, and its sibling Cooperative Services Inc., remain modestly in the background regarding hospital healthcare. But without them, the show couldn't go on.

"We supply Lee Memorial Healthcare System and Sarasota Memorial Healthcare System with surgical supplies, pharmaceuticals and records retention," said Gayle Reynolds, LeeSar's chief financial officer. "We are a non-profit company that has seen our revenues grow from $25 million 10 years back to $100 million today."

The supplier also serves Southwest Regional Medical Center and Gulf Coast Hospital.

Operating out of two buildings in Lehigh Acres, LeeSar delivers the surgical instruments, gowns, drugs and everything necessary for the nurses and physicians in the hospital to give care to the sick and injured.

COURTESY PHOTO Workers prepare orders for Lee Memorial Healthcare and Sarasota Memorial Healthcare hospitals at LeeSar's 60,000-square foot building in Lehigh Acres. LeeSar is a joint venture of the two hospitals.

It stores records going back to 1948 in its two-story, 40,000-square foot facility near Lee Boulevard. The shelves of medical records stretch from the floor to the ceiling.

The idea is to open up valuable space in hospitals and keep costs down. The company invests in technology to cut costs further.

It has made room in one of its facilities for an automated supply rotation system that will bring goods to employees, rather than having them spend time walking around.

It operates like a carousel in the room, bringing everything within easy reach and saving space.

"Hospitals cost $350 a square foot," Reynolds said. "Here we cost $6 a square foot."

Keeping costs for supplies and drugs down is also the job of William Tousey, vice president of Cooperative Service. Through his company, he is able to negotiate bulk buying for the supply system.

COURTESY PHOTO LeeSar warehouses goods until needed by either hospital system.

Tousey's office is in a separate twostory, 60,000-square foot building, also in Lehigh Acres. This building hums with its portion of the 150 employees split between the facilities.

"We care about our employees," Reynolds said as she called nearly every employee encountered in both plants by their name. "I know a lot of their names but not all."

Employees known as pickers, dressed in scrubs, put together surgical packs, which include the instruments, gowns, bowls, sponges and other medical equipment an operating room staff needs to perform a variety of surgeries.

The packs save the hospitals more than $350,000 per year but the main thrust is to make sure the medical staff has the right tools necessary for patient care, Reynolds said.

All the packs are custom made to the hospital's orders.

Lee Sar delivers at least three times a day, seven days a week, to hospitals to make sure everything is in stock for a patient's care.

The caring attitude is everywhere at the Lee Sar facilities, from the pictures on the walls of healthcare givers treating patients to top management.

Take Ken Greco, the director of pharmacy service for Lee Sar.

Not only does he explain how breaking down bulk bottles of pills into individually wrapped packages makes the nurse more efficient, he emphasizes the safety of having every package, every pill, bar-coded to the patient.

"We promote efficiency so that nurses can devote more time to their primary responsibility - the patient," Greco said. "The patient is our primary responsibility also."