The 208-bed ShorePoint Health Punta Gorda hospital permanently closed in October following flooding from Hurricane Milton. Last month, AdventHealth announced it entered into an agreement to purchase the hospital’s assets, ShorePoint Health Port Charlotte and ShorePoint Health Emergency Department in Cape Coral from Community Health Systems Inc. for $265 million in cash.
Cain Brothers, a division of KeyBanc Capital Markets, served as the financial adviser to AdventHealth on the transaction.
Unknown is the fate of the Punta Gorda hospital that is being decommissioned. The hospital license will be conveyed to the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration on Feb. 28, ShorePoint Health officials confirmed.
AdventHealth officials said after the transaction is completed sometime in the first quarter of 2025, an announcement will be made regarding the future of the Punta Gorda hospital site.
Meanwhile, most of the ShorePoint Health Punta Gorda employees are now working at ShorePoint Health Port Charlotte.
The loss of the Punta Gorda hospital leaves the county with two hospitals — the 254-bed ShorePoint Health Port Charlotte and the 253-bed HCA Florida Fawcett Hospital in Port Charlotte.
Both ShorePoint Health and HCA Florida Fawcett Hospital are for-profit entities. Meanwhile, AdventHealth is a faith-based, nonprofit health care system affiliated with the Seventh Day Adventist Church.
“We are excited about the opportunity to bring whole-person care to these communities and look forward to partnering with the dedicated team members and physicians to meet the growing health care needs of Southwest Florida,” said Terry Shaw, president/CEO for AdventHealth.
“Our ShorePoint family of providers, with its skilled physicians and compassionate employees, is a resource for safe, quality care in our communities, and becoming part of AdventHealth creates exciting possibilities for the future,” said Andy Romine, CEO for ShorePoint Health.
Over the years, ShorePoint Health hospitals have had various names. They have been owned by both for-profit and faith-based nonprofits, including the Seventh Day Adventist Church in 1969 (Punta Gorda) and the Felician sisters, who founded the Port Charlotte hospital in 1962, when it was Saint Joseph’s Hospital.
Both hospitals were built by General Development Corp.
Charlotte County’s first hospital was the Punta Gorda hospital opened in August 1947. It was named Punta Gorda Hospital and had 12 beds, according to various historic records.
Before the hospital was built, physicians and patients had to travel to Fort Myers or Arcadia for hospital treatment.
The Port Charlotte hospital had 50 beds when it opened in 1962.
Tennessee-based Community Health Systems Inc. is one of the nation’s largest health care companies operating in 39 markets across 15 states. It currently owns or leases 69 affiliated hospitals with more than 11,000 beds and operates more than 1,000 health care sites, including physician practices, urgent care centers, freestanding emergency departments, occupational medicine clinics, imaging centers, cancer centers and ambulatory surgery centers.
