Baptist Health South Florida readies family medicine hospital

A new kind of hospital is opening in a former tomato field in far West Kendall, designed around a growing idea for family medicine that emphasizes outpatient and preventive care—plus some innovative extras. The four-story, $210-million West Kendall Baptist Hospital, opens April 27, the first completely new, non-replacement hospital in Miami-Dade County in 30 years. It has 133 inpatient beds, relatively few for its 282,000 square feet, reflecting the impetus by doctors, new technologies and insurance companies for ever-shorter patient stays. It's built to handle 40,000 emergency room visits a year, helping to relieve the crowded ERs at Baptist Hospital to the east, which now gets 70,000 such visits, and Baptist's South Miami Hospital on South Dixie Highway, which handles 33,000 annual visits.