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Business Outlook 2006
Hospitals branch into underserved suburbs
At least five hospitals are considering expansions or new satellites in the county.
By JAMES THORNER and PHIL DAVIS
Published February 19, 2006
Pasco County hospitals long pinned to the county's old population centers are hoping to slide into the physician-poor suburbs from Trinity to Wesley Chapel.
Florida Hospital Zephyrhills (the former East Pasco Medical Center) and Community Hospital in New Port Richey have nabbed parcels to serve residents pouring into Pasco's southern tier.
Florida Hospital owns 50 acres on Bruce B. Downs Boulevard north of State Road 56. It expects to open a medical tower there by 2010.
Community plans to open a new hospital behind Trinity's Mitchell Ranch Plaza in 2007-2008. The site is northeast of State Road 54 and Little Road.
And if the local competition weren't enough, Tampa's University Community Hospital has set its sights on U.S. 41 property owned by the Connerton development in Land O'Lakes.
UCH hopes to open a 50-bed Pasco hospital by 2010. The property is well situated to serve more than 15,000 homes proposed in projects such as Connerton and Bexley Ranch.
In New Port Richey, Morton Plant North Bay Hospital, the same hospital that tried to leave the city three years ago, is now working on an expansion timed to the departure of Community.
State officials blocked Morton Plant's move to Trinity, noting the hospital's building was in better shape than Community's and that the nonprofit corporation had room to grow at 6600 Madison St.
By 2008, Morton Plant is considering building a 30,000- to 40,000-square-foot facility and expanding the emergency room, intensive care unit and operating rooms.
Another of west Pasco's hospitals, Regional Medical Center-Bayonet Point, also has considered the lucrative suburbs. But a tentative search for Land O'Lakes sites was disrupted by UCH's deal with Connerton.
State regulators with the Agency for Health Care Administration frown on duplicating hospitals in one community, particularly half-developed communities such as Land O'Lakes and Wesley Chapel.
[Last modified February 19, 2006, 01:09:21]
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