The planned 100-bed acute care facility will be the North Port’s first hospital and the system’s third.
“That area has been growing quite a bit, and we’ve been working on the medical infrastructure to support an acute care hospital for quite a few years,” Sarasota Memorial CEO David Verinder told Becker’s. “With the commitment and resources now in place, we think the time to build is now.”
Over the years, Sarasota Memorial has invested in land across its service area and owns two large parcels within North Port. After evaluating accessibility, patient drive times and projected growth, the system selected the site for the new hospital.
“We then looked at the services that the area needs, and those are the services that we will be concentrating first on in this facility,” Mr. Verinder said.
The hospital will include an emergency room, an intensive care unit, medical-surgical beds, an operating room, and cardiac, orthopedic and other services, he said.
The Sarasota County Public Hospital Board approved the $450 million plan on Jan. 28, and site preparation is underway. Groundbreaking is expected in June 2025, with the hospital set to open in 2028.
The plan includes the project’s first phase, which features the new hospital, a medical office building for primary and specialty physician practices and a backup energy center. A future phase will expand the hospital’s capacity to 208 beds or more.
Systemwide growth
The system is in “growth mode,” Mr. Verinder said. It is opening an outpatient cancer pavilion to complement an inpatient and surgical oncology tower it opened at Sarasota Memorial Hospital-Sarasota in 2021. It is also expanding its outpatient network across the region and recently opened a freestanding ER in the northern part of its service area.
The expansion extends to its workforce as well. Sarasota Memorial employs about 11,000 team members and expects that number to grow to 15,000 within three to four years, he said.
As seen with the opening of Sarasota Memorial Hospital-Venice in 2021, the system anticipates North Port’s new hospital will attract more staff who prefer to work locally rather than commuting to Sarasota.
“One of the things that we really are always concerned with when we open up new facilities is that we take the culture that we have built for 100 years now and mirror that in our new facilities,” Mr. Verinder said.
