UF Health officials braved a chilly morning to break ground for the new UF Health Orthopaedic Surgical Center, which is already in the beginning stages of construction.
“It’s always nice to do a groundbreaking when I can see the ground is already broken,” said Steve Motew, president and CEO of UF Health, in a speech. “It’s a privilege to stand with you here today as we take another significant step forward in our mission to serve our patients with excellence, compassion and dedication.”
Motew said the new center is part of UF Health’s push to expand access to primary specialty care in Gainesville. He named the new East Side Urgent Care Center that opened last summer, the new Florida Recovery Center campus expected to be completed by the summer of 2025, and ongoing renovations at the UF Health Shands Children’s Hospital.
The center is to be 24,000 square feet with eight specialized orthopaedic operating rooms and a recovery room at 3480 Hull Rd. It is planned to allow joint replacement patients to go home on the day of their procedures and will house a new nerve reconstruction team performing micro-surgical procedures to restore function to extremities affected by trauma and disease.
Dr. C. Parker Gibbs Jr., chair of the UF College of Medicine’s Department of Orthopaedic Surgery and Sports Medicine, said there is a national shift in sites of surgical care from large academic teaching hospitals to more convenient outpatient sites.
The center, targeted for completion in early 2026, will also provide advanced arthroscopic visualization and technological improvements for UF Health’s sports surgeons to manage injury outcomes.
Gibbs said the new center will be bolstered by the surgeons, anesthesia providers, nurses and administrators who work there. It will also have new “electronic infrastructure” such as artificial intelligence, robotics and surgical visualization to promote remote education for UF students and residents, as well as surgeons around the world.
“UF Health orthopaedics is known for its world-class quality and clinical expertise, and now patients will be able to access that care even more easily,” said Traci d’Auguste, UF Health COO.
The UF Orthopaedics and Sports Medicine Institute, which sits near the new surgical center and cares for over 100,000 patients a year, will mark its 20th anniversary next month.
US News & World Report currently ranks UF Health’s orthopaedics program as #46 in the nation.
