St. Joseph Hospital-South Welcomes Florida Patients

RIVERVIEW, Fla. — Southern Hillsborough County’s first nonprofit hospital opened its doors on Feb. 2 and will be bringing 500 new jobs to the Riverview community.

The new, $225 million St. Joseph Hospital-South is located on 72 acres of land and is the latest addition to 12 nonprofit hospitals operated by BayCare, a health care provider based in Clearwater, Fla.

Located just south of Tampa, Fla., the new 360,000-square-foot hospital features 90 patient rooms, 22 private observation rooms, as well as a 32-bed emergency center with 10 beds dedicated to patients with minor ailments who need fast-track services.

The hospital also offers six operating suites with two designated just for women, as well as two interventional radiology/cardiac catherization labs and suites for general, orthopedic, urological and outpatient pediatric surgery. The full-service hospital also houses a 16-bed intensive care unit, eight labor and delivery rooms, and a 14-bed mother/baby unit.

St. Joe’s South was designed by Nashville, Tenn.-based Gresham, Smith and Partners, and its general contractor was Barton Malow of Southfield, Mich. The hospital was constructed with patient experience and comfort in mind, offering private patient rooms with full bathrooms and in-room family areas. To facilitate patient comfort and healing, patient rooms are carpeted, and the facility incorporates natural light, calming colors and tranquil images.

“It really does create what I think is truly a healing environment, not only for our patients but for families as well, which is just as important. St. Joseph’s is sensitive to the physical and spiritual needs of those we serve,” said St. Joseph’s Hospital-South President Scott Smith in a statement. “We are dedicated to healing the body, along with nourishing the mind and soul.”

On the technology side, the new hospital offers an array of services. They include CT scans, MRI, echocardiography, nuclear medicine, ultrasound, mammography, X-ray and fluoroscopy. The hospital has invested in other advanced technology, including electronic medical records with real-time access to patient results, radiologic images and transcribed reports. All patient rooms will feature telemetry monitoring and patients will experience easier registration through biometric palm scanning, a device that uses harmless infrared light to detect the pattern of veins in palms. It’s 100 percent more accurate than fingerprints, Nader Mherabi, the chief information officer at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York, told CBS News last October.

The hospital is also using robotic surgery via the da Vinci Surgical System, a robotic system that is a minimally invasive option for major surgery.

At the hospital’s Shimberg Breast Center, women will be able to receive mammograms, breast ultrasounds, and MRI of the breast and image-guided biopsies in a spa-like atmosphere.

The Franciscan Sisters of Allegany purchased the land for St. Joseph’s Hospital-South in the mid-80s because they foresaw a future need in this growing community. St. Joseph Hospital-South was built to be environmentally friendly and incorporates high-efficiency systems that reduce energy consumption, as well as building materials made of recycled content. The hospital aims to reduce its water use and has implemented an HVAC system that can improve indoor air quality.