UF Health Opens 99-Bed Hospital, Medical Campus in Durbin Park

UF Health opened its new Durbin Park hospital and medical campus to patients on September 22, planting a 220,000-square-foot, 99-bed acute-care facility on 42.5 acres in northern St. Johns County and marking one of the region's largest healthcare infrastructure investments in years.

The campus sits off State Road 9B minutes from Interstate 95, in the heart of a growth corridor that has made St. Johns County one of the fastest-growing in the nation. An adjacent 72,000-square-foot medical office building will open to patients soon, housing more than a dozen outpatient and specialty-care services—from orthopedics and neurosurgery to cardiology and pain management—that until now required many residents to travel to Jacksonville or beyond.

What's on the new campus

The five-story UF Health Durbin Park Hospital includes a 24-hour emergency department, advanced imaging services, six operating rooms, two endoscopy suites, cardiac catheterization labs, interventional radiology, and private inpatient suites. The facility is licensed for 99 beds in its first phase.

The neighboring medical office building will provide outpatient care in ear, nose and throat (ENT), general surgery, gynecology, heart and vascular, laboratory services, neurology, neurosurgery, orthopedics, pain management, rehabilitation services, and urology, according to the county's announcement. Together, the hospital and office building total roughly 292,000 square feet of clinical space.

St. Johns County Commissioners Sarah Arnold and Christian Whitehurst represented the Board of County Commissioners at the September 17 ribbon-cutting ceremony. UF Health St. Johns President Wayne Marshall joined University of Florida Board of Trustees Chair Mori Hosseini and university leaders to mark the opening.

The new campus is part of UF Health's broader network expansion in Northeast Florida, joining UF Health Jacksonville, UF Health North, and UF Health Flagler Hospital in a regional system anchored by the University of Florida's academic health center.

What it means for access to care in St. Johns County

For thousands of residents in northern St. Johns County—particularly in the Durbin Park, RiverTown, and SilverLeaf master-planned communities along the County Road 210 and State Road 9B corridors—the campus eliminates drives of twenty to forty minutes or more for emergency care, inpatient surgery, and many specialist visits that previously required trips to hospitals in Jacksonville.

The facility's location near the intersection of SR 9B and I-95 also positions it to serve patients from Clay County to the west and southern Duval County, both of which have seen sustained residential growth over the past decade. Emergency-room wait times and hospital-bed availability in Northeast Florida have been pressure points as population has outpaced healthcare capacity; a 99-bed hospital with a dedicated ER adds measurable acute-care supply to the region's inventory.

UF Health's decision to anchor the campus with a full-service hospital—rather than an urgent-care or outpatient-only model—signals confidence in the area's long-term growth trajectory and represents a capital commitment running into the hundreds of millions of dollars. Academic health systems typically build inpatient facilities only where patient volume and payer mix can sustain costly services such as cardiac catheterization labs, interventional radiology, and round-the-clock surgical teams.

The adjacency of inpatient and outpatient services under one campus also supports care coordination: a patient seen by a neurologist in the medical office building can be admitted upstairs for stroke care or transferred seamlessly within the UF Health network if tertiary services are needed at the Jacksonville flagship.

How the campus fits into Durbin Park's broader buildout

Durbin Park is a 4,300-acre mixed-use development in northern St. Johns County that has been master-planned for residential neighborhoods, retail, office, and institutional uses. The area falls within the County Road 210 corridor, which has been the center of gravity for St. Johns County's explosive growth over the past fifteen years, fueled by top-rated public schools, new-home affordability relative to coastal submarkets, and highway access via I-95 and SR 9B.

Large-scale healthcare campuses are uncommon in suburban greenfield developments; their presence typically accelerates surrounding commercial and office development by creating daytime population and signaling long-term stability. The UF Health campus is likely to draw medical office tenants, outparcel pharmacies, rehabilitation clinics, and other ancillary healthcare businesses to nearby parcels within Durbin Park over the next several years.

The campus also adds a major institutional employer to the county's economic base. While the announcement did not specify job counts, a 99-bed hospital with six ORs, a 24-hour ER, and a 72,000-square-foot outpatient building typically requires several hundred full-time equivalent positions—physicians, nurses, imaging and lab technicians, environmental services, food service, and administrative staff—many of which are year-round, benefits-eligible roles.

St. Johns County's Strategic Plan lists Economic Prosperity as one of six priorities, and county commissioners framed the opening as aligned with that goal. Healthcare employment tends to be recession-resistant and wage-stable, qualities that diversify a tax base and support local retail and housing demand.

Traffic, infrastructure, and emergency-service implications

A hospital campus of this size generates substantial daily vehicle trips—staff shifts, patient visits, ambulance runs, supply deliveries—concentrated on State Road 9B and the I-95 interchange. SR 9B was built as a tolled, limited-access connector designed to handle growth in the Durbin Park and Nocatee corridors; the roadway has capacity, but the hospital will claim a meaningful share of it, particularly during shift changes and peak outpatient hours.

Emergency medical services in St. Johns County will also adjust routing and protocols. The new ER becomes the closest trauma-stabilization option for a swath of northern county residents and for crashes along I-95 in this segment. St. Johns County Fire Rescue and private ambulance providers typically establish direct radio and transfer protocols with new hospital ERs; response-time maps and mutual-aid agreements are redrawn when a facility of this scale comes online.

Utility demands—water, sewer, and especially electricity for a facility with operating rooms, imaging equipment, and climate control—are substantial. The campus is within the service territory of the St. Johns County Utility Department for water and sewer; hospitals require backup generation and redundant utility feeds under Florida health-facility licensing rules, infrastructure that would have been coordinated during permitting but which ratepayers ultimately finance through capacity charges and rate base.

What happens next

The hospital opened to patients on September 22, 2026. The adjacent medical office building is slated to open soon, though the announcement did not specify an exact date for outpatient services to begin.

UF Health Durbin Park is described as a first phase, language that suggests the 42.5-acre site was planned with room for expansion—additional bed towers, more surgical capacity, or specialty institutes—as population growth warrants. Academic health systems typically build modular campuses with utility rough-ins and foundation provisions for vertical additions; monitoring UF Health board agendas and St. Johns County site-plan amendments will reveal whether and when subsequent phases are funded.

Residents seeking care at the new campus can expect the facility to integrate with UF Health's electronic medical record system, allowing physicians across the Jacksonville, North, and Flagler campuses to access the same patient charts. Insurance networks and payer contracts will mirror those of the broader UF Health system.

A hospital where homes are landing

The Durbin Park hospital is the latest and largest piece of healthcare infrastructure to follow—rather than precede—the wave of rooftops reshaping northern St. Johns County. For years, residents in RiverTown, SilverLeaf, and the County Road 210 corridor have watched schools, retail, and now a full-scale hospital arrive in step with subdivisions, a pace of growth that has made St. Johns one of the nation's fastest-growing counties and a bellwether for how Northeast Florida's rural-to-suburban transformation plays out in real time.

Where hospitals locate is where regions grow. The UF Health Durbin Park campus is both a response to the thousands of families already here and a bet that thousands more are on the way.