WTC Member Spotlight: BayCare Health System

Three of BayCare Health System’s Hillsborough hospitals are getting upgrades. The Clearwater-based health care company will invest $308 million over the next three years to expand St. Joseph’s Hospital in Tampa, St. Joseph’s Hospital-North in Lutz and St. Joseph’s Hospital-South in Riverview.

“The greater Tampa Bay area continues to be a popular destination,” Kimberly Guy, president of St. Joseph’s Hospital, said in a release. “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.”

The $126 million expansion at St. Joseph’s Hospital includes building a six-story tower that will house a two-story lobby, waiting rooms and on-call rooms, as well as three patient-care floors and a mechanical support floor. There will also be 30 private patient rooms on each patient-care floor. A new bridge will connect St. Joseph’s Women’s Hospital to the main hospital across Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. Currently, patients and visitors must use a roadside crosswalk to walk from one hospital to another.

Construction on St. Joseph’s Hospital is expected to begin in 2018 and wrap up by the end of 2019.