HCA Healthcare will build hospital in Fort Myers near site of new Lee Health hospital
Correction: The address of the new HCA hospital has been corrected from an earlier version.
Tennessee-based HCA Healthcare, the largest hospital operator in Florida, announced Tuesday it would make good on long-anticipated plans to build a health center in Lee County.
But the announcement comes with a twist: HCA's 275,870-square-foot facility, expected to be finished by 2025, won't go to Estero as once thought. Instead, it's planned for 3851 Colonial Blvd. in Fort Myers, which is near the site of Lee Health's newly announced hospital.
The four-story, 100-bed HCA facility will include an emergency department with two trauma rooms, a 16-bed intensive-care unit with a 24-bed step-down unit; 54 medical, surgical and telemetry patient rooms, and a women’s services unit with six labor and delivery rooms, a C-section operating room, a nursery and room for future expansion.
Plans for the Fort Myers hospital were included in a company news release Tuesday morning that also revealed a new 90-bed, 209,595-square-foot hospital in Gainesville and a 60-bed, 172,588-square-foot health center in The Villages.
2018: Florida approves three new hospitals for Collier and Lee
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“Florida continues to experience rapid population growth, and the addition of these new hospitals will help HCA Florida Healthcare meet the increasing need for acute care services in these areas,” Sam Hazen, chief executive officer of HCA Healthcare, said in a news release.
The for-profit health system has 47 hospitals in Florida and has invested about $3 billion in the state over the last three years, including the $360 million HCA Florida University Hospital that opened earlier in November.
Its hospital on Colonial would mark its re-emergence in the Southwest Florida market. HCA operated the long-ago-demolished Southwest Florida Regional Medical Center and what was formerly known as Gulf Coast Hospital. Lee Health acquired both in 2006 in a $535 million deal.
HCA's decision to build in Fort Myers is a shift in plans it had for a health center in Estero.
The company in December 2018 spent $52.5 million to buy land in that fast-growing city. Earlier that year, it received approval from state regulators to build an 80-bed hospital there with a psychiatric unit.
"We felt that in order to address the need in that area, this was the location that would provide the best access as the population grows and continues to expand demand for healthcare services," Ravi Chari, president of HCA West Florida, said Tuesday morning about the Colonial site.
Chari would not comment further on the Estero site or if the company had additional plans for health center expansion in Southwest Florida.
Lee Health is planning a 216-bed hospital along Colonial Boulevard that's expected to be complete by 2027. Its health center would be on 52 acres along Challenger Boulevard, between Colonial Boulevard and Winkler Avenue.
Lee Health planning its own new hospital: Lee Health planning new 216-bed hospital along Colonial Boulevard to open in 2027
The publicly operated health care system has operated about 95% of the acute-care hospital beds in Lee County since 2006.
That near-monopoly on hospital services has been expected to end ever since Florida lawmakers eliminated a state approval process for new hospitals in 2019 — a process known as "Certificate of Need" reviews.
"With the repeal of the Certificate of Need process a few years ago, Lee Health has known that it was likely that a for-profit hospital would come into the market," Lee Health spokeswoman Mary Briggs said in an email. "As we have for the past century, Lee Health will continue to serve all residents of this region through our outstanding system of care, which expands well beyond our five acute care hospitals."
Frank Gluck is a watchdog reporter with The News-Press and the Naples Daily News. Connect with him at fgluck@news-press.com or on Twitter: @FrankGluck.
This article originally appeared on Fort Myers News-Press: HCA to build new Fort Myers hospital along Colonial Boulevard
