PORT ST. LUCIE — The battle for hospital supremacy on the Treasure Coast continues.

HCA Inc., which owns two hospitals in St. Lucie County, filed an appeal this week with the 1st District Court of Appeal in Tallahassee to stop Martin Memorial Health Systems from building a new hospital in Port St. Lucie’s Tradition community.

HCA exhausted its state appeals last month.

Martin Memorial, a non-profit organization that owns two hospitals in Martin County, received permission from the state more than two years ago to build an 80-bed hospital in Tradition. Martin Memorial officials said it was needed because of St. Lucie’s rapid growth and the distance from its western communities to Lawnwood Regional Medical Center & Heart Institute in Fort Pierce and St. Lucie Medical Center in eastern Port St. Lucie.

Lawnwood and St. Lucie Medical Center officials argued that beds were available at each site. They said the reversal of the county’s economic situation made another hospital unnecessary.

In a statement released today, Lawnwood’s Chief Executive Officer Rodney Smith said the state made “critical errors” in its assessment of need in the area, and that taking patients away from HCA’s two hospitals would threaten their ability to provide care and invest in new technology.

“More hospitals with fewer resources lowers the quality of care for every patient,” he said.

Ronda Wilburn, a spokeswoman for Martin Memorial, said they were disappointed by HCA’s announcement, but not surprised.

“HCA has stated repeatedly that a hospital should not be built in Tradition,” she said. “Clearly we disagree with that assertion.”

She said that the success of their new emergency clinic in St. Lucie West demonstrates the need for additional medical care in the western communities.

Since it opened in September, the center has seen more than 2,000 patients a month — putting it on track for about 24,000 patients this year, well above the 15,000 to 18,000 hospital officials had expected.

The $100 million project would be built on a 20-acre site in The Florida Center for Innovation at Tradition, alongside biotechnology companies, such as the Vaccine & Gene Therapy Institute and Torrey Pines Institute for Molecular Studies.

The hospital, pending the appeal, wouldn’t be built for another three to four years. It would employ more than 400 people with an average salary of $53,000, according to Martin Memorial.

An appeal could take a year or more to resolve.

Tags: business, HCA Inc., Hospitals, Martin County, Martin Memorial Health Systems, St. Lucie County

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 31st, 2009 at 12:37 pm and is filed under Courts, Health, Martin County, St. Lucie County, Tradition, Treasure Coast business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.