HEALTH CARE
City’s second hospital
opens at Tradition
The 90-bed medical center is expected
to admit 6,000 patients its first year
Tradition Medical Center’s capacity can be expanded upward to 300 beds in anticipation of future growth in western Port St. Lucie.
BY GREG GARDNER
The long-awaited Tradition Medical Center has
opened, offering health care to 85,000 St. Lucie
County residents who live within 5 miles of the
$115-million facility.
“This is a once-in-a-generation event,” says
Scott Samples, spokesman for Martin Health System, which
opened the hospital on Dec. 18. “We first applied to the state
in 1998. It was well worth the trip and a long time coming.”
The Martin Health System, which also operates Martin
Memorial Hospital in Stuart, received the necessary state
certification in 2007 to begin construction for the Tradition
PHOTOS BY GREG GARDNER
location and broke ground in March 2012.
“The hospital will be a huge asset to the community with
hundreds of new jobs and new technologies since it is near
the research facilities,” says St. Lucie County Commissioner
Chris Dzadovsky. “It will be an incentive for further development
and jobs for the southeast part of the county and
western Port St. Lucie.”
The 90-bed hospital is at the southwest corner of Interstate
95 and Tradition Parkway and within walking distance of
Torrey Pines Institute for Molecular Studies and the Vaccine
and Gene Therapy Institute, or VGTI. The Mann Research >>
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