Florida Hospital Wauchula

Florida Hospital Wauchula is a Seventh-Day Adventist hospital in Wauchula, Florida, United States.Hardee Memorial HospitalThe hospital was started in the 1970s as Hardee Memorial Hospital. The main hospital building has always been located a 533 W. Carlton Street. This hospital has always been small, but from the start it provided necessary health services for a highly rural area of Florida. From the start it had a maternity unit, although apparently no emergency or outpatient services.Baby Swap IncidentIn 1978 a baby swap took place at Hardee Memorial that ultimately forced it to close its doors. Babies Arlena Twigg and Kimberly Mays were born within days of each other and were switched and sent home with the wrong parents. Relatives of one of the mothers were prominent in the opening of Hardee Memorial. One was involved in the building and financing of the hospital and another was on the hospital board of trustees.The baby swap was discovered ten years later, when one baby died of a congenital heart defect and laboratory testing showed the baby was not related to her parents. In 1992 author Loretta Schwartz-Nobel published a book about the incident. The book, The Baby Swap Conspiracy, also inspired a TV movie, Switched at Birth, that had aired the previous year.According to Schwartz-Nobel, Hardee Memorial was forced into bankruptcy due to the legal battle concerning the baby swap. Hardee Memorial closed in July 1992. Soon after Florida Hospital Heartland Division, which ran hospitals in Sebring, Florida, and Lake Placid, Florida, obtained the closed hospital and has been running it ever since.