An Instrument of Generosity

Dr. R. Dean Hautamaki

By Sylvia Whitman | Photo by Nancy Guth

Grateful patients often leave flowers or chocolates at the nurses’ station, but philanthropist Gloria Flanzer had the means to think big. In the early 2000s, she asked her personal physician, Dr. Raymond Dean Hautamaki, what she could do for Sarasota Memorial Hospital (SMH) to make a meaningful impact on direct patient care. Then co-medical director of critical care at SMH, Hautamaki offered some suggestions, and Flanzer donated nearly $1 million for new hardware in the ICU, from advanced dialysis equipment to thermo-cooling machines that lower brain temperatures in comatose cardiac-arrest patients for 24 hours and improve neurological outcomes.

A year later, SMH hosted a survivors’ day. “Gloria was able to meet over 100 individuals who were saved by her equipment and walked out of the hospital,” Hautamaki recalls. “It came full circle for her that she really had the ability to have an impact on people.”

Née Milstein, Gloria benefitted from her family’s successful New York business. Her father, a Russian immigrant, laid floors at Rockefeller Center, Madison Square Garden, and the city’s airports, and Gloria’s brothers branched out into property development. Lou Flanzer, Gloria’s husband, also invested in real estate. The couple split their time between homes in Scarsdale, NY, and Longboat Key. In 2005, they created the Louis and Gloria Flanzer Philanthropic Trust, now one of the largest private donors in Florida. 

Hautamaki cared for the Flanzers through Lou’s death in 2013 and Gloria’s in 2015. “I knew Gloria and Lou for two decades—just wonderful human beings,” he says. The favorable assessment was mutual. Because local health care ranked high in Gloria Flanzer’s priorities, Hautamaki now serves as co-trustee of the Flanzer’s philanthropy, alongside longtime Milstein family attorney and CPA Eric Kaplan. 

“My long-term knowledge of the hospital and its needs, and Eric’s understanding of the foundation and the management of its assets—we work well together,” Hautamaki says.

Hautamaki’s connections to Sarasota Memorial Hospital run deep and long—all the way back to the delivery room, where he and his sister were born. As a student at Riverview High School and later UF, he spent summers drawing blood as a hospital phlebotomist. After training as an internist and pulmonary care specialist in Gainesville and St. Louis, he returned to Sarasota in 1996. Over the years, he’s held a spectrum of leadership positions at SMH. 

“Gloria knew the landscape here. She knew I had a strong working relationship with the hospital. She also knew I was going to be in Sarasota forever,” Hautamaki says. 

Dean and his wife, Lizzie, a parenting educator, will soon send the youngest of their four children to college, but their folks still live in town. And the Hautamakis’ “Old Florida” retirement dream lies just down the road, a small ranch near Myakka City big enough for their four dogs, two cats, and Lizzie’s organic garden. (Hence the doctor’s cowboy boots.) 

“I’m not going anywhere,” Hautamaki says. 

As a private physician, Hautamaki helps paying and pro-bono patients navigate complex health care—lung transplants, cancer, advanced cardiac lung issues, stints in the ICU. “I’m usually in the hospital three to four hours every day,” he says—and longer during emergencies or on call. He and his partners hold office hours every day, make morning and evening rounds at SMH, and visit patients in their private homes as well as in skilled nursing and rehab facilities. Now, on top of the “day job,” trustee Hautamaki spends about 15 hours a week on philanthropy-related email, phone calls, and meetings. “I shouldn’t say it’s my hobby; it’s my passion.” 

Although still chief of internal medicine, Dr. Hautamaki has resigned from SMH’s medical executive committee—a transparency move. However, his partner, Todd Ken Horiuchi, has taken on that role, and Hautamaki’s long friendships and working relationships allow him to collaborate to determine the region’s most pressing medical needs.  

“Memorial is a safety net hospital,” serving not only Sarasota but Manatee, Charlotte, and DeSoto counties with its Level II trauma center, Hautamaki explains.  “We’re probably going to do 3,000 major traumas this year.” Third- and fourth-year FSU medical students rotate through the hospital, which has a three-year internal medicine residency program and is about to launch another residency in emergency medicine. In the works are a regional cancer center and a building with simulation labs, classroom s for graduate medical education, and an auditorium. Hautamaki, also an FSU clinical associate professor of internal medicine, says with a bit of understatement, “There’s a lot going on.”

To date, trustee Hautamaki has collaborated with SMH colleagues on funding requests. “We’ve developed a list of what is needed to keep this hospital a top hospital. We have a lot of cutting-edge technologies that university hospitals would love to have,” he says. The Flanzer Trust undertakes a cost analysis, then gives the money to the Sarasota Memorial Hospital Foundation, which makes grants directly to departments. Last year alone, the trust provided about $750,000 for ICU and $500,000 for cardiac-care equipment upgrades. Another $800,000 will help launch the new ER residency program. “And we will most likely be instrumental in the building of the medical education building,” Hautamaki says.

But first, the trust honored one of Gloria’s main wishes—“to endow the department of cardiology at Columbia University.” That $35 million donation, the trust’s first major gift, opens the way for funding larger projects on the Gulf Coast, says Hautamaki. 

The trust is also developing a website to allow Gulf Coast nonprofits to make requests. Hautamaki points out that the Flanzers already have made substantial contributions to “long-term organizations that truly touch people in need,” such as Jewish Family and Children’s Services (JFCS), which has a Gloria & Louis Flanzer Campus.

On their own, Dean and Lizzie Hautamaki have supported merit scholarships at the University of Florida College of Medicine, where Dean sits on the President’s Council. But in his role as trustee for the Louis and Gloria Flanzer Philanthropic Trust, he underscores the Flanzers’ heart and vision.

“Eric Kaplan and I are the instruments that have been put in place to ensure that their wishes to help people and benefit society and our community are achieved,” Dr. Hautamaki says. “It’s not about Eric and me. It’s about Lou and Gloria. A lot of folks will not ever know them, not ever know their name, but they’ll be touched by their generosity.”

FOR MORE INFORMATIONabout the Sarasota Memorial Healthcare Foundation, call 941.917.1286 or visit smhf.org.