By HFT Editorial Staff

Sarasota Memorial Health Care System recently announced it is investing $1 billion in its facilities. In November, Sarasota Memorial opened the Sarasota Memorial Hospital-Venice, a 65-acre medical campus and new 110-bed hospital in Venice. The same day, the organization unveiled its Brian D. Jellison Cancer Institute, an eight-story oncology and surgical tower on its Sarasota campus. The health system also spent the past several weeks paving the way for construction on a new, state-of-the-art behavior health pavilion in 2022.

Collectively, the projects represent a $1.2 billion capital investment and the most significant expansion in the publicly owned, not-for-profit health system’s nearly century of service. All are designed to address pressing community needs.

Sarasota Memorial's inpatient volumes have increased by more than 30 percent over the last five years. The hospital's Sarasota campus was regularly at capacity before the onset of COVID-19 and stretched beyond its limits during pandemic-related patient surges.

The two recently opened facilities have increased system-wide inpatient capacity from 839 beds to 1,005 beds. Meanwhile, the behavioral health pavilion will expand essential services at a time when COVID-19 has disrupted lives and led to an increase in people struggling with mental health challenges.