Health Care Centers Up Soon for Barrier Island Residents


 

SARASOTA, FLORIDA, August 25th, 2015 – New satellite health services are rising soon in Longboat Key and St. Armands Key, promising to further enhance the quality of life in their local communities and, in so doing, also contribute some towards the marketability of their neighborhoods’ residential properties listed among Sarasota homes for sale.

For Longboat Key, a fundraiser set from July to October 2015 is coming up with $1.6 million in private funding for a new medical facility at the barrier island. This town facility, to be called the Longboat Key Center for Healthy Living, is planned on or close to the vicinity of Bay Isles Parkway and Bay Isles Road where a proposed town center is also on the drawing boards.

Critical in-season need

Health Care Centers Up Soon for Barrier Island Residents

The Longboat Key Foundation, the prime mover of this project, hopes to have the medical facility operational by year-end or by January 2016, just in time for the next season when snowbird residents return for their winter retreat in the island. The services of a Center for Healthy Living would especially be important during the in-season as the island’s population of about 7,000 more than doubles to around 18,000 to 24,000 with the seasonal residents coming home.

It is critical to have medical services in the island particularly in the in-season because of the heavy traffic that will certainly be encountered by those trying to get to the mainland for health care. Since May 2014, there had been no primary physician within Longboat Key with the retirement of the town’s lone doctor that month.

The proposed services of the Longboat Key Center for Healthy Living will include not only family medicine and women’s health. It will also provide on-site lab and imaging services and handle patients who need help on behavioral and specialist services.

SMH unit at St. Armands

The Longboat town’s healthcare facility would be an apt complement to the urgent care clinic that the Sarasota Memorial Hospital (SMH) is setting up just south of the island at St. Armands Circle. SMH already has a site for this facility which is envisioned to serve not only St. Armands residents but also those living in Longboat, Lido and Bird Keys.

Around April 2015, SMH purchased a vacant 5,476-square-foot building at 500 Ringling Blvd. which will house the urgent care center. It is scheduled for start-up either late 2015 or early 2016.

This facility would be the hospital’s sixth urgent care facility in the Sarasota-Manatee region, after those in Bee Ridge and Stickney Point Roads in Sarasota, plus similar clinics in University Parkway, Venice, and Heritage Harbour in Manatee County. Like these five SMH urgent care clinics, the St. Armands Circle facility would operate all days of the week between 8:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m. As in its sister SMH facilities, it will also be manned by board-certified emergency room physicians.

Like the Longboat Key Center for Healthy Living, the planned SMH facility enjoys popular support from the community. Positive feedback has been expressed in particular by business owners and residents who are for sure convinced of the favorable impact this facility would have on their locality, extending even to values of Sarasota homes for sale in their neighborhoods.