Lower Keys Medical Center Earns Joint Commission Gold Seal, Heart-Check Mark

Lower Keys Medical Center in Key West announced Feb. 27, 2026 that it “has again earned The Joint Commission’s Gold Seal of Approval® and the American Stroke Association’s Heart-Check mark for Primary Stroke Center Certification,” listing the award on hospital materials. The announcement names the Gold Seal of Approval® as the Joint Commission recognition and identifies the Heart-Check mark by name.

Hospital postings also refer to an Advanced designation, stating that “Lower Keys Medical Center has earned The Joint Commission’s Gold Seal of Approval® for Advanced Primary Stroke Center Certification” and noting that Lower Keys Medical Center “underwent a rigorous, unannounced onsite review on March 25, 2022.” Those items appear on separate LKMC pages that describe Joint Commission stroke certifications and onsite review activity.

Lower Keys Medical Center, located at 5900 College Road, Key West, serves the Lower Keys and is owned by Community Health Systems, Inc. Facility listings and local provider pages describe LKMC as the region’s primary acute care hospital with 24/7 emergency department care, 24/7 laboratory and radiology services, medical transport and a specially equipped medical transport helicopter maintained on its pad 24/7. Keepcareinthekeys material states, “In 2024, we provided care for more than 134,000 patient encounters across our hospital, physician clinics and other sites of care. This includes more than 23,000 ER visits and 3,300 hospital admissions.”

The hospital’s public profile highlights additional accreditations and recognitions, including Joint Commission Acute Care Hospital Accreditation, the American Heart Association’s Get With The Guidelines: Stroke Silver Plus: Type 2 Diabetes Honor Roll, Intersocietal Accreditation Commission accreditation in echocardiography, American College of Radiology accreditation for mammography and recognition by the American College of Cardiology as a Chest Pain Center. LKMC materials also refer to the Joint Commission’s Gold Seal of Approval® in the context of Acute Care Hospital Accreditation.

Clinical staffing updates on LKMC pages name interventional cardiologists Leandro Perez, M.D., and Julian Javier, M.D., who “join Cesar Jara, M.D., in the Lower Keys Medical Center cardiac catheterization lab,” reflecting recent additions to the hospital’s cardiovascular team as detailed in hospital announcements.

Publicly available listings show inconsistent bed-count figures: multiple entries describe LKMC as a 167-bed acute care hospital, while one facility detail line lists “Short Term Acute Care • 111 beds.” The hospital’s founding year is listed as 1971, and online reviews aggregated on one platform show a 3.7 rating based on 25 reviews with several individual five-star staff reviews dated between 2024 and 2026.

Taken together, the Gold Seal and Heart-Check mark cited by LKMC in the Feb. 27, 2026 announcement join a suite of hospital accreditations and come after a period in which the facility reports handling more than 23,000 emergency visits in 2024, underscoring the hospital’s role as the Lower Keys’ first line of defense in medical emergencies.