The Santa Rosa Medical Group is expanding its reach in Northwest Florida by opening a clinic in Cantonment.
“The location at Cantonment marks the medical group’s first primary care clinic in Escambia County and is designed to provide more convenient healthcare access to residents in the area,” a news release issued in late May said.
Santa Rosa Medical Group plans to open for business in July at a facility at 2360 S. Highway 29 that had previously operated under the HCA Florida West banner. The building is owned by Cronley Development Company LLC based in Pensacola, documents show.
The clinic run by the Santa Rosa Medical Group will offer comprehensive primary care services for adults, including preventive care, treatment for minor illnesses, chronic disease management, wellness visits, and walk-in visits, the release said. Patients will be able to receive most care without an appointment.
Rachael Shumaker will serve as the clinic’s primary care provider.
“As an Escambia County native, it means a great deal to me to care for patients in the community I call home,” said Shumaker. “I’m excited to join SRMG and provide such a needed service in the area.”
Santa Rosa Medical Group is a subsidiary of Community Health Systems out of Franklin, Tennessee, which operates not only the 129-bed Santa Rosa Medical Center in Milton, but also the North Okaloosa Medical Center in Crestview.
Efforts to reach spokespersons for either Santa Rosa Medical Group or Community Health Systems were unsuccessful, but a Community Health Systems website indicated that the expansion of operations to serve rural areas in the midsection of Escambia is in keeping with company strategy.
“We recognize the growing need for accessible primary care services in Central Escambia County,” Randy DeLee, Santa Rosa Medical Group’s chief administrative officer, said in the organization’s news release. “This new clinic represents our commitment to providing convenient, high-quality care closer to where people live and work.”
DeLee did not return a phone call seeking comment.
The move by Community Health Systems, doing business as Santa Rosa Medical Group, to occupy a medical facility previously operated by HCA Florida West is the second time in recent memory that a competitor has moved in to fill a healthcare void left by HCA.
In January, Baptist Medical Group announced the opening of a primary care clinic at 4244 Avalon Boulevard in Milton, another location HCA Florida West, which had operated the same type of clinic, had vacated.
Ed Cronley, with Cronley Development, confirmed his company had built both the Avalon Boulevard and the Cantonment area medical facilities that were originally occupied by HCA Florida West.
“I think they had a bunch of room at their hospital, so they closed a couple of the satellites,” he said.
HCA Florida West spokesman Kendrick Doidge did not return phone calls seeking comment.
Cronley said his company has built approximately 10 “doc in the box” facilities like those in Cantonment and on Avalon Boulevard, and they are not difficult to convert from the needs of one medical provider to another.
“The way most of these medical facilities are built it’s pretty much cut and paste,” he said. “If somebody moves out all we really have to do is paint the walls and touch up the sign.”
But for all the shuffling between healthcare providers in and around Santa Rosa County, County Commissioner Kerry Smith said he continues to be frustrated by a hesitation on the part of any of the four major healthcare providers operating in Northwest Florida to open a clinic in fast-growing East Milton.
“I met with Randy DeLee at his office (after hearing about the Cantonment expansion) and that was my main question to him, ‘What about East Milton?’ “
Smith said as he sees it, the various providers’ strategic plans seem to be primarily based on one-upping one another.
“The strategies, their business models, don’t make any sense to me,” he said.
The Santa Rosa County Commission has gone so far as to set aside 8,000 gallons per day of sewage capacity it retains at the city of Milton’s aging wastewater treatment plant as an incentive to lure a healthcare provider. Smith, who represents East Milton, said that the precious capacity is going to be doled out first come, first served.
“I’ve told them the first one that opens in East Milton gets the Wastewater Treatment Plant capacity,” he said. “It will happen (a provider will locate in East Milton) and when it does all of them will be beating down my door.”
Kyle Holley has been acting as a Santa Rosa liaison between the county and the healthcare providers. He has said that all four of the medical health services that operate in Northwest Florida—Baptist, Ascension Sacred Heart, HCA Florida West Hospital and Community Health Systems—had expressed some interest in an East Milton facility.
“We’ve been talking for over a year to three of them and more recently conversations with the fourth have picked up,” Holley said in May of last year.
This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Santa Rosa Medical Group to open primary care center in Cantonment
Reporting by Tom McLaughlin, Pensacola News Journal / Pensacola News Journal
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
