Health care expands in the area in a big way

The medical services field in and surrounding Lakewood Ranch is growing so fast you can almost smell the disinfectant in the air.

Across the community and into Manatee County, some of Florida’s largest health care providers are in the process of building out a network of facilities to serve the growing population.

These groups say their research has found a need for services ranging from ambulatory to prenatal to cancer care. To meet this need they have added, or will add, tens of thousands of square feet, hundreds of beds and dozens of specialities dedicated to treating patients. That growth includes hiring physicians, nurses, staff and more personnel. 

Just how big is this building boom?

• Clearwater-based BayCare plans to develop a pair of medical office buildings in support of its BayCare Hospital Manatee, a $563 million project under construction along with a BayCare HealthHub on Moccasin Wallow Road. It will include 154 beds in private rooms and is expected to open in early 2028.
• Sarasota Memorial Health Care System opened an emergency room last year at 7250 University Parkway, at the corner of Lorraine Road, which is expected to serve as many as 150 patients a day.
• Orlando Health, with nearly $10 billion in revenue in 2025, is building a medical complex on 32 acres off State Road 70 at Crossland Trail in Lakewood Ranch. It paid $12 million for the site in April 2022, Manatee County property records show. Orlando Health has declined to comment on its plans but both a developer backing a Lakewood Ranch medical office building and a commercial real estate listing have said it will be a hospital. 
• A new, five-story patient tower opened at the Lakewood Ranch Medical Center March 24. The new tower, says interim CEO Philip Reber, “is a continued commitment to patient care and accommodations, which is what this community needs … It’s about leveling up ... to a higher level of care.” The $120 million project adds 60 beds to the hospital campus. 

“There are lots of options in the Sarasota-Manatee market for health care. But as far as having those specialties or those facilities a short drive away, I think it’s important,” Lakewood Ranch Business Alliance President and CEO Brittany Lamont says. 

Long lines

As you can imagine, these major medical organizations aren’t making decisions on where to grow on a hunch. Far from it. Several of them came together in 2024 and into 2025 to conduct a Community Needs Health Assessment for Manatee County and Lakewood Ranch.

The survey was done by The All4HealthFL Collaborative, a coalition of agencies and health care systems. Among them were OrlandoHealth, BayCare Health Systems, Tampa General Hospital and Moffitt Cancer Center.

In doing its research, the collaborative spoke to residents and collected data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and FLHealthCharts. The collaborative also put out a survey asking residents questions about health care, housing and employment, as well as other needs, gaps and resources in the community.

On March 31, 2025, 42 community organizations working in Manatee and members of The All4HealthFL Collaborative held a three-hour meeting that looked at the findings and discussed community needs as well as potential strategies.

What did this group discover about the area?

“The next three years will harbor a lot of unknowns, but what is known about Manatee County is that it is a growing community,” the report said. “With growth comes the need for more services, providers and infrastructure to accommodate the projected population growth and changes.”

It also found concerns about long wait times, difficulty finding providers, affordability concerns and limited convenient locations for care. 

Into the future

The type of information generated in the survey is what drives the decision making and strategy for medical groups, say officials with BayCare, which is expanding its ambulatory care services in the area as a direct result of what residents shared in the survey. (Ambulatory care includes medical services such as primary care, specialty care, imaging, laboratory services and other outpatient services.)

BayCare is already one of the biggest health care nonprofits in Florida, with 16 hospitals throughout Hillsborough, Pinellas, Pasco and Polk counties and some $7 billion in operating revenue.

Dr. Christopher Bucciarelli, BayCare’s vice president for ambulatory services as well as its chief medical officer, says the information garnered from talking to the public allows the health care system to improve overall care and bring specific service to an area that may lack them.

He points to a need for women’s health services.

“For us, making sure there’s a location for women to have their children and have their deliveries and feel safe in that environment are the things that we want to make sure to have,” he says.

“If there’s a need in a community, we want to bring that to the community because it’s so important to the life cycle of a family, right? That can be a key part of that. So, we also want to make sure that the additional services are being complementary as well.”

While guided by community needs, expanding is not simple.

Health care organizations have to be smart about how they grow, balancing immediate needs with long-term planning to ensure high-quality and compassionate care, Bucciarelli says.

That means BayCare is often looking 10 years down the line while simultaneously looking at what can be done in five years or less to make sure it is being fiscally responsible while addressing pressing needs.

“You can’t build everything all at once in one place,” he says. “And so (we look at), where is the biggest need that we’re able to provide that access?”

Luckily for Lakewood Ranch, that need is right around the corner.