Just four months after breaking ground on its new Fort Myers health care campus, Lee Health announced this week a $150 million expansion to the facility.

The expansion to the 53-acre Lee Health Fort Myers campus at 4453 Challenger Blvd. will include a four-story, 118,000-square-foot patient tower and a 7,600-square-foot on-site child care center for Lee Health team members.

Lee Health said the expansion to phase one of the project is being made in response to the rapid population growth in Southwest Florida.

In making the announcement, Lee Health President and CEO Larry Antonucci said the health care system is “growing alongside our community.”

“With this additional investment, we are reaffirming our commitment to being Southwest Florida’s leading health care provider by ensuring we have the infrastructure, technology and compassionate care teams in place to meet the increasing health care needs of our residents and visitors,” Antonucci said. “This health campus offers a centralized location for wellness in our community.”

Ben Spence

Asked why the expansion was deemed necessary so close to the start of the project, Lee Health Chief Operating & Financial Officer Ben Spence said the system had been looking closely at average daily census — how many patients are in the hospital each night on average — since the initial plans were made more than two years ago and determined it would make sense to add beds now when all permits are in place and construction is ongoing.

“We realized that if we were going to expand, we had to do it while we still had workers on the ground, while we could still do it without delaying the project significantly,” Spence said. “So, we looked at the [average daily patient] census and it was clear that we were going to need more beds to best meet the needs of the community going forward.”

Spence said the region’s rapid growth over the last few years factored into the analysis, as well.

“We are one of the fastest-growing areas in the nation, so keeping up with the growth of the population and watching as we go on, how they utilize hospital services becomes a key component of how we’re projecting the bed need going forward.

“We want to give you [patients] access to care when you need it and where you need it, and this expansion is going to help us get you in that bed quicker.”

The planned expansion will increase the hospital’s capacity by 92 beds, for a total of up to 260, including 48 acute care beds, 20 skilled nursing unit beds and shelled space for an additional 24 acute care beds. The hospital also will feature 10 operating rooms, a 44-bed emergency department and up to 24 ICU beds.

The $820 million capital investment in phase one of the new campus now includes the development of a child care center for use by the health care system’s team members, relocating the existing Lee Memorial Child Development Center.

Spence said the child care center will accommodate about 114 children, up from 80 children in the current facility.

“Having extra capacity to provide our staff with a child care service that is affordable and is subsidized by the system is a great benefit to have right on-site,” Spence said.

In addition to the hospital and the child care center, the Lee Health Fort Myers campus will include a medical office building that will be home to the Lee Health Musculoskeletal Institute, with eight operating rooms.

Spence said the system expects to open the new campus in summer 2028.

And while plans have not been formalized for phase two, Lee Health Media Relations Manager Jaclyn Bevis said, this may not be the last time Lee Health expands construction at or near the site.

At the time of the groundbreaking in late January, Antonucci said future plans for the health care campus could include a hotel that could accommodate patients having surgery or other treatment after their discharge from the hospital.

“There aren’t any immediate plans, but there is space here for a hotel, so we anticipate that very well may be something that’s added in the future,” Antonucci said. “We’re not in the hotel business, but having a hotel adjacent to an orthopedic, a musculoskeletal hospital is a very common thing. People can have surgery, they can spend the night, come back to therapy and then maybe go home the next day.”