Lakewood Ranch Medical Center opening a free-standing emergency room in Sarasota
Lakewood Ranch Medical Center has been holding job fairs this week to recruit health care workers to staff its new free-standing emergency room at 6760 Fruitville Road.
Called the ER at Fruitville, the $10 million, 11,000-square-foot facility is scheduled to open Dec. 1. Among the open health care positions are registered nurses, respiratory therapists, imaging and lab techs, as well as registration and housekeeping staff.
The ER at Fruitville is located at the southern edge of Lakewood Ranch, on the south side of Fruitville Road, and just to the north of Celery Fields, a popular bird-watching and passive recreational area.
“It’s just like walking into an ER in a hospital,” said Andy Guz, CEO of Lakewood Ranch Medical Center. he added that the new facility will be open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, year round.
At the heart of ER at Fruitville is that nursing station that is visible to six exam rooms, and three rapid exam rooms for patients who do not require a bed. There are also two negative pressure rooms that suck air in from outside, filter it, and then expel it through the roof, critical necessities in the age of COVID-19.
The ER will also be equipped with an 80-slice CT scan, X-ray, and laboratory.
“A lot of emergencies need blood work and imaging,” Guz said.
ER at Fruitville is equipped to handle walk-in patients, as well as those delivered by ambulance. Patients requiring hospitalization will be transported to Lakewood Ranch Medical Center, unless the patient’s requests to be transported elsewhere, Guz said.
There were not a lot of medical facilities east of Interstate 75, and many patients to Lakewood Ranch Medical Center come from Sarasota, Guz said in explaining the process of selecting a site for ER at Fruitville.
“This is an area in need of emergency room services. We worked in conjunction with Sarasota County government and are very happy with how it turned out,” Guz said.
The three-acre site was previously owned by the Southwest Florida Water Management District, which had a building on the property.
Ground-breaking for ER at Fruitville was Jan. 11. Jacksonville-based Haskell is the contractor for the project, which used prefabricated modules made by BLOX in Bessemer, Ala.
“The building was completed in about four days,” Guz said.
The modules were transported to the site, and assembled there.
Lakewood Ranch Medical Center and Manatee Memorial Hospital are owned by Universal Health Services, based in King of Prussia, Pa. Manatee Memorial has 319 patient beds and Lakewood Ranch has 120 beds.
This story was originally published October 29, 2020 at 11:43 AM.
