Certificate of Need to build North Jacksonville hospital approved

UF Health Jacksonville has received the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration’s final approval for its Certificate of Need to build a new inpatient hospital on Jacksonville’s Northside.

The campus will serve Jacksonville’s fastest-growing area. From 2000 to 2013, North Jacksonville grew 30 percent – more than double the growth rate of the rest of Duval and Nassau counties. Yet it is the only part of the greater Jacksonville area without an acute care hospital.

A six-story 210,000-square-foot medical office complex is already under construction on the 70-acre site and set to open in early 2015. The first two floors of the building will serve as the core of the hospital, while the recently approved Certificate of Need will allow UF Health to build an accompanying bed tower for inpatient stays, explained Wayne Marshall, associate vice president of UF Health North.

The medical office complex that opens next year includes a 28-bed emergency room, five operating rooms, two endoscopy suites, a catheterization laboratory, interventional radiology, complete diagnostic imaging (including MRI and CT scans), a full laboratory and outpatient services. It will bring more than 170 new jobs to the Northside.

“This will fill a great need for the community in North Jacksonville, and will also help support the valuable mission of UF Health Jacksonville downtown,” Marshall said.

UF Health North will offer convenient access to both UF Health physicians and community physicians, providing a variety of health care services in one location. Services will include:

Outpatient Services

• Free-standing emergency room
• Outpatient diagnostic services
  • Advanced imaging
    • Open-oval MRI
    • 64-slice CT scan
    • PET scan
  • Clinical laboratory
• Outpatient surgical services
• Anesthesia and pain management
• Cardiac catheterization
• Gastrointestinal laboratory
• Interventional radiology
• Midwifery and birthing center

Specialty Services

• Surgery
  • Bariatric (weight-loss) surgery
  • Oral, maxillofacial and plastics
  • Ophthalmology
  • Orthopaedics, podiatry and rehabilitation
  • Urology
  • Vascular
• Internal medicine
  • Cardiology
  • Dermatology
  • Gastroenterology
  • Oncology (cancer services)
  • Pulmonology
  • Rheumatology
• Gynecology and women’s health
• Neurology and sleep medicine
• Psychiatry
• Pediatrics

“As UF Health North races toward completion in February we are eager to open this big, beautiful building on our new campus,” said Daniel Wilson, MD, PhD, dean of the University of Florida College of Medicine – Jacksonville. “UF faculty and staff are proud of our long legacy as the region’s academic health center with some 800 clinicians in multiple specialties. UF Health North will allow us to better serve this community and sustain our superb teaching hospital downtown.”