Growing to Serve Our Communities

Building a new hospital is a big undertaking and hospital systems don’t do it every day, so deciding when and where to build can take years. That was the case with BayCare’s decision to build its next hospital in the unincorporated Wesley Chapel area of Pasco County.

BayCare already operates one hospital, Morton Plant North Bay Hospital, on the coastal western edge of Pasco County, but in recent years growth has exploded in the interior parts of the county where BayCare had no hospital.

“We started looking at the Wesley Chapel community about 10 years ago,” said Glenn Waters, executive vice president and chief operating officer of BayCare. “That market is rapidly growing and there’s only one other provider in the Wesley Chapel market providing acute care hospital services. We thought the community deserved to have an alternative. Plus, we have a lot of BayCare team members who live in that area, and they said, ‘Why isn’t there a BayCare hospital here to serve us?’”

Ground finally was broken in December 2020 for BayCare Hospital Wesley Chapel (BHWC), and by the end of 2021, the hospital was rising quickly on open acreage on Bruce B. Downs Boulevard.

BayCare wants to be a good corporate citizen and neighbor in this new market, so health system representatives have met with Pasco government and business leaders, physicians practicing in the area and residents of a nearby neighborhood to answer questions and allay any concerns.

“As we go into the Wesley Chapel market, we want to be mindful to work with the community and meet the needs of the community,” Waters said. “There will be a local board of directors for the hospital that will include representatives of that community. That’s really important because they can help us identify the needs of the community and how we can best meet those needs.”

BHWC’s first president, Becky Schulkowski, was named in August 2021. A clinical pharmacist by training, she is keeping an eye on construction progress while also building connections in the community and putting together the hospital’s leadership team.

The $246 million hospital will offer all the services of a community hospital, with 86 beds, an emergency department with 20 beds, four operating rooms and two endoscopy suites. It was designed so it can be expanded as the community grows. The facility already is providing jobs. On any given day, some 300 men and women in the construction trades work on the bustling site, and the completed hospital will employ roughly 250 people. It is expected to open in 2023.

“We’re really excited to be a part of the Pasco County community,” said Schulkowski, who worked for BayCare in other leadership roles for four years before she was promoted to hospital president. “This hospital brings additional access to care. It brings choice in health care providers. And it brings the values of BayCare to the community. We set ourselves apart by living the values of dignity, excellence, respect, responsibility and trust, and we bring those values to everyone who walks through our doors and to all the care we provide. It’s an honor to be part of this project.”