$130 Million Expansion Complete At St. Joseph's Hospital

RIVERVIEW, FL — A $130 million expansion at St. Joseph's Hospital-South in Tampa Bay has recently completed after three years.

The newest addition allows mothers of premature babies to stay in a room with their newborns.

An eleven-bed Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at the hospital opened Monday as part of the expansion, hospital officials said. The NICU is for babies born prematurely or with special health needs. The Level II NICU provides specialized 24/7 care for newborns and their mothers.

St. Joseph’s Hospital-South can also transfer babies requiring higher care levels to the Level IV NICU at St. Joseph’s Women’s Hospital in Tampa.

The addition of the NICU and pediatric inpatient unit will augment and expand the services we provide for mothers and their children,” Rita Templeton, St. Joseph’s Hospital-South director of patient care services, said. “We’re excited to be able to offer this level of NICU to the communities of southern Hillsborough, the South Shore and northern Manatee County. The family-centered NICU will provide individualized care and a comforting environment for the whole family.”

Other expansion features include:

• In May 2020, a build-out of two additional medical/surgical floors was completed adding 36 private rooms for medical/surgical and 12 private rooms for progressive care and telemetry patients. Four new surgical operating rooms were also opened in May 2020. The new operating rooms are used for inpatient and outpatient surgeries. With the expansion, St. Joseph’s Hospital-South now has 10 operating rooms including two ORs for C-Sections and one operating room dedicated for state-of-the-art robotic surgeries.
• Types of surgeries/procedures performed at St. Joseph’s Hospital-South include: bariatric, cardiac catheterizations, ENT (ear, nose and throat), gastroenterology, general surgery, gynecology, interventional radiology, nephrology, neurosurgery-spine, obstetrics, orthopedic, pediatric orthopedic surgery, pulmonary, urological and vascular.
• The May 2020 phase also included added space for rehabilitation and respiratory therapy departments. Physical therapists, physical therapy assistants and speech pathologists primarily work with patients at the bedside but their new space contains a stair training area and treatment table for patients doing therapy outside of their hospital rooms.
• The first phase of the expansion was completed in October 2019 and included a 25-bed emergency center expansion, bringing the total ER beds to 55. This emergency area also includes CT, X-ray, ultrasound rooms and an 18-bed emergency center observation unit.