Bay Area health care systems expanding as region continues to see major growth

Expanding health care access in Tampa Bay area

Hospital systems in the Tampa Bay area are expanding in non-traditional ways as the region continues to see major growth. The healthcare systems are targeting areas that don't have an existing emergency department nearby. FOX 13's Kylie Jones reports. 

TAMPA - Hospital systems in the Tampa Bay area are expanding in non-traditional ways as the region continues to see major growth. The health care systems are targeting areas that don't have an existing emergency department nearby.

Big picture view:

AdventHealth is opening three off-site emergency departments in the Tampa Bay area and Central Florida. 

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"Offsite EDs are basically just an emergency room without the hospital and the inpatient beds attached," Christine Fredrick, the chief strategy officer at AdventHealth West Florida, said. "They have all the imaging and all of ancillary services that you would need for an emergency room visit."

An off-site emergency department recently opened in Ocala, and on Thursday, AdventHealth broke ground on a site in Polk County, and has plans for a third site in New Port Richey. Dr. Mark Ortolani works at the hospital system's Ocala site and says they treat patients with a wide range of needs every day. 

"Those patients range from having lacerations and broken fingers and toes, all the way up to seeing patients that have strokes, or heart attacks," he said.

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Frederick says they studied the growth in the region and chose areas based on population growth and proximity to care. 

Tampa General Hospital is also expanding to reach a growing number of patients. In the fall of last year, TGH announced that it purchased 53 acres of land adjacent to its Crystal River emergency center in Citrus Hills.

The hospital system says the expansion will include a hospital, medical office building, central energy plant and helicopter pad.

BayCare is also expanding, with recently announced plans for a freestanding children's hospital at St. Joseph's in Tampa. The hospital system released renderings, with hopes of it opening in 2030.

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What they're saying:

"With all of our growth in population, we can no longer expect all the population to go to one emergency room on the hospital campus," Fredrick said. "There just has to be more access points."

Doctors with AdventHealth say they'll still be able to transfer patients from an off-site emergency department to a hospital if they need to be admitted for further. 

"So, this helps offload some of the volume from the main emergency departments," Ortolani said. "Two, it also allows for additional access to patients because some of these folks might live an hour away from a main emergency department."

He says having access to full medical care can be critical to a patient's outcome. 

"Having the ease of access or quicker access to emergency departments, medical professionals, technology, so on and so forth, is absolutely life-saving," he said.