Baptist Health Care is getting a new home. At a press conference Wednesday morning, Baptist President and CEO Mark Faulkner unveiled the plans for a new campus with 650,000-square feet of patient care space. The site of the new facility will be the southwest corner of Interstate 110 and Brent Lane in Pensacola. "We are excited about this location because it keeps us close to our current campus while also creating more accessibility to the greater community."
The estimated cost of the new facility is $550 million. It will replace the current hospital and campus on E Street which opened in 1951. Faulkner says a lot has changed in medicine since that building was christened.
"(Back then) a mom, when she delivered a baby, would stay (in the hospital) a week. If we had a gall bladder removed we stayed a week. We hadn't even heard of total hip replacement or knee replacement. Penicillin was not even being manufactured on a wide scale. This facility was not designed for today's health care."
Faulkner says that the current plan is to build a modern version of the facilities and services that Baptist offers at the E Street location, but does not rule out adding services in the future. "We are going to evaluate the potential of new services. we know, for example, that we need more critical care access, we need more emergency department access and throughput, and other services. We do know also that this new technology and facility will facilitate dramatic improvements in care. Technology and physician providers are more the catalyst to new services as opposed to bricks and mortar."
Once the move to the new hospital is made, Faulkner says Baptist will continue to have a presence at the current E Street location. "All of our administrative services, other programs and support services, clinical services and all of our Lakeview programs will remain at the E Street campus. And we look forward to working with community partners, non-profits, the faith community, the business community (and) elected officials as we work together to reimagine our current E Street campus."
Faulkner added that it’s unlikely all of the current buildings on E Street will be used after the move and could not rule out some of them being abandoned or taken down in the future.
The project is currently in the planning stages. Construction is scheduled to begin next summer. The opening of the new location of Baptist Hospital is set for summer of 2023.
