Hospital system plans $308M expansion

TAMPA — BayCare Health System plans to invest $308 million in an expansion project of three hospitals.

The facilities, in Hillsborough County, include St. Joseph's Hospital in Tampa, St. Joseph's Hospital-North in Lutz and St. Joseph's Hospital-South in Riverview. All three projects have been approved or are in the approval process by city and county planning officials, with construction beginning next year and completion expected by the end of 2020, hospital officials stay in the release.

“At BayCare, we are always evaluating the current and future needs of our community," says Kimberly Guy, president of St. Joseph's Hospital and BayCare's market leader for Hillsborough County, in the statement. "The greater Tampa Bay area continues to be a popular destination and these expansions will allow us to not only meet its rapid population growth but also better serve the medical needs of our neighbors by increasing our medical specialties and services."

Plans at St. Joseph's Hospital include a new six-story tower, with a two-story lobby with drive-up front entrance, as well as waiting and on-call rooms; three patient care floors with 30 private patient rooms per floor; and a connecting bridge to St. Joseph's Women's Hospital across Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. The capital cost of that project is $126 million and the project is expected to be completed in December 2019.

At St. Joseph's Hospital-North, the project includes two additional patient care floors with 54 private patient rooms per floor and a build out of four existing shelled operating room suites. The capital cost of that project is $70 million, according to the release, and the project is expected to be completed in August 2019.

St. Joseph's Hospital-South's two-phase expansion includes a new five-story building in phase one and build out of two additional medical/surgical floors in phase two. The capital cost for phase one is $74 million and phase two is $38 million, according to the release. Phase one is expected to be completed by April 2019 and phase two by December 2020.

A nonprofit, BayCare operates 14 hospitals and hundreds of other convenient locations throughout the Tampa Bay and west central Florida regions.