Ascension St. Vincent's is breaking ground today on its newest hospital, a 56-bed facility being built in St. Johns County,
The $115 million facility is expected to be complete in 2022.
Located at the northeast quadrant of I-95 and County Road 210, Ascension St. Vincent’s St. Johns County will be part of a mixed-use development known as Fountains North.
The Fountains at St. Johns is being developed by Jacksonville-based Cross Regions Group, whose CEO, David Ergisi, previously told the Business Journal he envisioned the site expanding into a 56-acre development that would serve primarily as a regional medical draw.
The hospital will start out with 56 beds, including 8 intensive care unit beds, as well as services like an emergency room, orthopedics and imaging services. It is expected to create 600 jobs.
Ascension said it picked St. Johns for a new hospital because it is the fastest-growing county in Northeast Florida and the only county in the state with only one acute care hospital. The county also has the second-highest population-to-acute-care-bed ratio in the state, the hospital said.
David Meyer, chief strategy officer of Ascension Florida and Gulf Coast, previously told the Business Journal that the hospital would be modeled after Ascension's Clay County hospital and, like the Clay County hospital, the St. Johns County hospital would provide health care services to an underserved area. “We built a hospital six years ago in Middleburg, and the statistics that were happening six years ago in Clay County are almost identical to what’s happening in St. Johns County today,” Meyer said at the time.