The University of Florida and Shands announced the they are opening a new facility in Northwest Alachua County. Florida's 89.1, WUFT-FM's Brianna Rittersporn was at the groundbreaking ceremony and spoke with both the CEO and Senior Associate Dean of University of Florida Physicians Marvin Dewar and UF and Shands Health Systems President David Guzick who both feel this move is a great addition to the healthcare center.
WUFT: Why is UF and Shands expanding the campus all the way out here?
Dewar: We really perceive the need to make things more accessible and convenient for our patients. We've got a large specialty campus that is close to our hospital on Archer Road. This is going to be a second large specialty campus in the northwest, which is where people live. It's also convenient off of the interstate and some major thoroughfares. So what we believe is that this will allow coordinated, convenient, accessible specialty care for our community.
WUFT: What are some of the benefits of a specialty care center such as this one?
Dewar: One of the things that having a campus like this will do is, first, way-finding becomes easy. When someone says, "where do you go to see your cardiologist?" or "where do you go to see your obstetrician?", and you say, "UF and Shands at Spring Hill," people will immediately know where that is. Secondly, by having speciality services in a single building allows physicians to refer to one another pretty seamlessly. It will have radiology and lab services here so that patients will be able to come in, see their doctor, get their labs done, have their x-rays done all at one stop.
Guzick says he sees this move as a great incentive, adding efficiency and quality to the Shands healthcare system.
WUFT: What kind of decisions had to be made to decide to build a separate specialty campus out here on 39th Street?
Guzick: We decided that the best way to approach outpatient care would be to have a series of primary care locations to serve people where they live and to congregate the specialty services in a couple of specialty locations, one being here and the other being on 34th Street where they orthopedics institute is located.
WUFT: What does this mean for students studying to work at Shands and for patients already using Shands?
Guzick: For students training to be in the healthcare profession and also for residents training to be in Shands Hospital at the University of Florida, this is an opportunity to have an exposure to outpatient care. In the future, American healthcare more and more will be outpatient, less and less will be in patient. So as part of the students' education or part of residents' training, outpatient care will be very important. So they'll be able to come out and have part of their education or training out here.
Hear the full interviews above.