For Naples Comprehensive Health, the May 5 opening of the Hospital for Special Surgery at NCH takes the health care system to “a different level,” according to President and CEO Paul Hiltz.

The 100,000-square-foot orthopedic facility on the campus of NCH North in Naples — complete with state-of-the-art Arthrex technology and design and staffed with top surgeons recruited from around the country — is a partnership with the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York City, the world’s leading academic medical center focused on musculoskeletal health.

A ribbon-cutting ceremony and community open house on May 2 will officially open the hospital’s Patty and Jay Baker Pavilion, which includes the Kapnick Foundation Ambulatory Surgical Center. Total cost for the new hospital is estimated at $140 million, according to NCH, with more than $40 million raised to date through philanthropic efforts.

“This is taking two really strong organizations and creating something brand-new for this region, and I believe we will become a destination for orthopedic surgeries and physical therapy,” Hiltz said in an interview prior to the ceremony. “It’s a new day altogether: We have never, in Southwest Florida, really had a comprehensive orthopedic hospital like this.”

Hiltz said HSS at NCH is part of the system’s goal to make world-class medical services available in Naples so that people who live here don’t have to travel for specialized surgery.

Justin Blohm, vice president of the NCH Musculoskeletal Center and Service Line, said during a pre-opening tour of the facility that HSS at NCH provides patients the opportunity to receive all of their specialized orthopedic care in one location in their own community.

“This is a very unique facility, and we’re able to bring the expert level of surgical care that our surgeons have to where our community is, instead of people having to travel,” Blohm said. “It’s all right here, and the big differentiating factor is that everything is in this one building. Patients are not trying to figure out where to go for imaging or for rehab. Navigating health care is a challenge and we want to take that complication out and be truly a one-stop shop with your treatment plan, potentially your surgery, your recovery and your rehab all in this facility.”

Blohm said procedures available at the hospital include spine and interventional spine surgeries; foot and ankle surgeries; hip and knee arthroplasty; sports medicine surgery; non-operative sports medicine; physical medicine rehabilitation; and musculoskeletal injury care.

High-tech facilities and top-level talent

The first floor of the 100,000-square-foot Baker Pavilion includes the 20,000-square-foot Kapnick Foundation Ambulatory Surgical Center, with five operating rooms.

The remaining 80,000 square feet includes clinic space, outpatient and inpatient rehabilitation, 15 private inpatient beds and five additional operating rooms on the second floor. The third floor contains imaging areas for MRIs, CT scans and two X-ray suites, with two additional rooms for office-based procedures.

On a pre-opening tour of the hospital, Blohm pointed out special capabilities of the ambulatory surgical center, including the Arthrex-supported observation theater that looks into two operating rooms on either side for physician education purposes.

“We can also broadcast the cases that are going on in those operating rooms anywhere in the world,” Blohm said. “If one of our surgeons is presenting, they could be operating here in Naples and presenting in Germany.”

Other technology includes a minimally invasive spine robot and two joint replacement robots.

And while the high-tech bells and whistles are impressive, HSS at NCH Medical Director Dr. David Backstein said it is the surgeons that will make the real difference.

Backstein was recruited to Naples from the University of Toronto, where he led the division of orthopedics at Mount Sinai Hospital, and he said he has recruited a group of nine physicians from around the U.S. to add to two longtime Naples orthopedic specialists.

“We have these great tools to use when we implement our decision-making, but ultimately, you can have a great piece of equipment, but if you [the surgeon] are not making the right decisions or not using it properly, that doesn’t help anybody,” Backstein said. “The robot doesn’t do the surgery and doesn’t make the intraoperative decisions that are the difference between a good and bad outcome.”

Backstein said he and the medical staff are looking forward to working in “a real cutting-edge facility in a community that we hope will really benefit from it.”

He added, “There hasn’t been this sort of concentrated experience and skill in one facility to date in Naples, and we’re really looking forward to doing what we do best and providing a good service to the local community.”

Benefactors prioritize health care

Asked about the role that philanthropy played in the project, Hiltz said that it was “a group effort by this community” to bring HSS at NCH to fruition.

That effort started with a $20 million fundraising challenge grant from philanthropists Patty and Jay Baker, and ground was broken for the project in November 2023.

The Bakers had high praise for HSS in New York after Jay Baker was a surgical patient there, and as a board member at NCH he set the wheels in motion that ultimately led to a partnership between the two institutions.

Asked why this project, out of the many projects they support, had special meaning, Jay Baker said it came down to prioritizing quality health care.

“We are involved in a lot of things, and I think each one is very important,” he said in an interview prior to the ribbon-cutting event. “But if you pick one thing, there is nothing more important than your health. And to have world-class orthopedics in our area, I think, is just a tremendous thing.

“I know what it was like when I arrived here in 2000 and what it’s like today, and it’s like two different worlds. And to be able to give to the people of Naples that kind of care I think is phenomenal. We have such great leadership in the hospital [NCH], and none of this is possible if we don’t have that kind of leadership.”

Patty Baker said she thinks the new hospital will keep seasonal residents from feeling that they need to travel for surgery.

“It will be a center for people to go to now, who normally would have gone back to where they lived for four or eight months of the year,” she said. “They can have the surgery, they can have the rehab here and not have to worry about commuting or being away from Naples — which they love, or they wouldn’t be here in the first place. So, convenience is one thing, and a state-of-the-art facility and incredible doctors and nursing staff.”

The first surgeries at HSS at NCH are scheduled for May 5.