Health Care in Florida: It Takes a Village

Briefs

UF Health Campus 

• UF Health is building a medical campus on Jacksonville’s northside off of I-95 that will include primary care and diagnostic services. The first phase of the project will include a medical office building; a hospital will have 92 beds initially.

Cleveland Clinic 

• Cleveland Clinic Florida expects to open the 143,000-sq.-ft. Egil and Pauline Braathen Center in early 2015, housing the expanded Pauline Braathen Neurological Center and the Cleveland Clinic Florida Cancer Center. Cleveland Clinic Florida this year also opened medical offices in Palm Beach Gardens and Parkland and completed more than 40 kidney and liver transplants as part of the transplant program it opened over a year ago.

Jackson Health 

• Jackson Health System, Miami-Dade County’s public health provider, plans more than 200 expansion and enhancement projects throughout the county. Plans include a $40-million pediatric ambulatory care center, a $117.4-million rehabilitation hospital and a $115.7-million hospital for the Miami Transplant Institute to be built in partnership with the University of Miami. Jackson also plans to spend $40 million building urgent care centers throughout the county.

Sarasota Memorial 

• Sarasota Memorial Hospital is considering whether to seek permission to open a trauma center. The state has allotted a second trauma center in the Manatee, Sarasota and DeSoto counties service area, which is now served by a trauma center at Blake Medical Center in Bradenton.
  
  Meanwhile, a group of hospitals has dropped its challenge against new trauma centers owned by Hospital Corporation of America. The state had allowed HCA to open trauma centers at its hospitals in Manatee and Pasco counties in late 2011 based on a rule the state devised to allocate trauma resources.

Sacred Heart Hospital 

• In July, Sacred Heart Hospital in Pensacola completed a $52-million, five-story addition with 112 private rooms. The expansion is the hospital’s biggest in almost 50 years.

BayCare 

• Clearwater-based BayCare plans to open St. Joseph’s Hospital-South in Riverview early next year. The hospital will have 112 private rooms, including 22 observation rooms, and employ about 500 people. It also expects to begin construction in mid-2015 on the second phase of a new Clearwater headquarters campus. The first phase was completed last fall with the opening of a 150,000-sq.-ft. office building and cafeteria. The second phase consists of a similar-size building connected at the cafeteria. BayCare has about 420 headquarters employees.

HCA 

• Hospital Corporation of America is spending more than $137 million to expand and renovate its hospitals in the Tampa Bay area, including: 
• A 72-bed emergency department at Brandon Regional 
• A 12-bed obstetrics unit at Oak Hill Hospital in Brooksville, which recently completed a $52-million expansion project 
• A three-story addition to South Bay Hospital in Sun City Center 
• A redesigned emergency room at Doctors Hospital of Sarasota 
• An expanded behavioral health department at the Indian Rocks Road campus of Largo Medical Center, increasing the number of Beds from 47 to 71 
• A new 10,600-sq.-ft. Clearwater emergency room that will be a department of Largo Medical Center 
• Renovations at Northside Hospital, Palms of Pasadena Hospital and St. Petersburg General Hospital 
• HCA has announced it will close Edward White Hospital in St. Petersburg and has a letter of intent to acquire Citrus Memorial Hospital in Inverness.
• West Marion Community Hospital and Ocala Regional Medical Center, both owned by HCA, have broken ground on $45 million worth of expansion projects that will add a total of 48 beds. The company expects to hire 75 workers to staff the new patient care areas.