Mayo Clinic and Ascension St. Vincent are among the healthcare giants who invested hundreds of millions of dollars into Northeast Florida this year to expand or upgrade technology, according to the Jacksonville Business Journal.
In 2019, Jacksonville-based Mayo Clinic Florida said it would build a $233 million, 190,000-square-foot oncology facility that will bring proton beam therapy and carbon ion therapy to Jacksonville, Fla.
Jacksonville-based Baptist Health also began several large projects this year, including building Florida's second largest children's hospital and a seven-story facility that will "reorient" its downtown Baptist Medical Center Jacksonville Hospital.
Ascension St. Vincent in Jacksonville this year filed plans with city officials to build two emergency departments that are expected to open in 2020.
In addition, Baptist Health, Gainesville, Fla.-based UF Health and Nashville, Tenn.-based HCA Healthcare all filed plans to build facilities in Nassau County.
"If you're going to have UF Health, Baptist and HCA, three mega-competitors that can literally stare into each other's windows along the I-95 and A1A corridor, something really good is happening, because that is a lot of capital investment, a lot of healthcare," former economic development board executive director Laura DiBella told the Business Journal. "And healthcare, in my experience, plants their money for decades."