CLIENT NEWS: A Miami Beach hospital is expanding across the bay. What to know about health center.
April 3, 2025Mount Sinai Medical Center plans to open a new freestanding ER, followed by a full-serve hospital and doctors’ offices, in a Miami-Dade community that’s home to more than 50,000 people.
Construction of the four-story medical center is underway just off Southwest Eighth Street near the Palmetto Expressway in Westchester, a mostly residential neighborhood filled with homes, schools, parks and businesses. This will be Mount Sinai’s second hospital in South Florida.
“We want to serve our patients the best we can and sometimes the answer to that is serving them in their community and having a presence in their community,” said Angel Pallin, the hospital’s executive president and chief operating officer.
The future Mount Sinai medical complex is being built on the former site of a used car dealership at 8200 SW Eighth St. Mount Sinai bought the land in 2023 for $32 million, property records show.
When will Mount Sinai’s emergency center open?
Pallin said the hospital will open in phases, with the 24/7 emergency room set to open on the first floor of the building in 2026. Patients can get the same type of emergency care at the 20,000-square-foot ER that they would expect at Mount Sinai’s flagship Miami Beach hospital and at its free-standing ERs.
Initially, the building will house just the freestanding ER, just like Mount Sinai’s emergency rooms in Aventura and Hialeah. That means patients who go to the Westchester ER and need to be admitted for further treatment will be transferred to Mount Sinai’s main campus in Miami Beach, just off the Julia Tuttle Causeway.
The rest of the hospital, which will care for adult patients only, is expected to open in 2027. Once the full complex is up and running, Westchester ER patients who need further care can be hospitalized right there. Patients will also be able to undergo elective surgeries, diagnostic imaging and receive cardiology, urology and other specialty care at the hospital.
“It’s a large footprint,” said Pallin, noting that the ER is expected to care for up to 30,000 patients a year.
ERs are different from urgent care centers and are meant to provide immediate medical attention, including for chest pain or signs of a possible heart attack, seizures, certain mental health issues, strokes, concussions, severe allergic reactions and breathing trouble.
“When patients aren’t sure what they have, going to a freestanding emergency department offers a great level of comfort” because of the ER’s ability to handle more serious conditions, Pallin said.
Why is Mount Sinai coming to Westchester?
The move west for Mount Sinai is part of the Miami Beach hospital’s plans to bring care closer to patients, a strategy to not only improve access to care but to also attract and retain new patients. Over the years, Mount Sinai has opened ERs and primary and specialty care centers across the county, including in Aventura, Hialeah, Doral, Miami and the Florida Keys.
Other South Florida health systems are following a similar expansion playbook, searching for growing pockets in Miami-Dade and Broward counties that lack certain medical services.
The University of Miami Health System, for example, recently opened a medical center in Doral, HCA Florida Healthcare has opened more than a dozen emergency rooms in the region, and Baptist Health South Florida, the region’s largest not-for-profit health system, is continuing to open new urgent, primary and specialty care centers.
About 63% of Westchester’s population is 18 to 64, with a median age of 46.8, according to Census Reporter, a website created by Northwestern University that visualizes data from the U.S. Census Bureau. About 23% of the population is at least 65. And as people get older, they’ll need more medical care, especially in aging Miami-Dade County.
That’s good news for Mount Sinai, which is also planning to construct a second medical building on the property to house doctor offices. Once the Mount Sinai Westchester complex is complete, patients will be able to get primary and specialty care, including cardiology, urology, gastroenterology and general surgery.
For Mount Sinai, the decision to make Westchester home to its second South Florida hospital was partly fueled by the number of patients that live in the eight-square mile-neighborhood, according to Pallin. He said the goal is to make it easier for patients to get care from Mount Sinai doctors. The lack of a “significant hospital presence” within Westchester’s boundaries was also appealing, he said.
Other nearby hospitals
Westchester encompasses a swath of the county roughly bordered by Eighth Street/Tamiami Trail to the north, Southwest 40th Street/Bird Road to the south, the Palmetto Expressway to the east and Southwest 117th Avenue to the west, according to a 2020 county memorandum.
You can find South Florida staples such as Bird Bowl, Arbetter’s Hot Dogs and Frankie’s Pizza within the boundaries. The La Carreta on Bird Road is a popular gathering spot, especially for celebrations and rallies that involve honking and banging pots and pans. Tropical Park also is a recreational centerpiece in the community and served as one of the county’s COVID-19 testing sites.
While it’s not hard to find doctors’ offices, urgent care centers and medical clinics near or in Westchester, the only hospital and ER within its boundaries is Keralty Hospital Miami. The 125-bed hospital, formerly known as Westchester General Hospital, is owned by the parent company of Sanitas Medical Center and is about two miles away from Mount Sinai’s new Westchester center. Patients can go to the full-service Keralty Hospital for cardiology, urology and other specialty care. Keralty offers elective and emergency surgical procedures, supportive services such as physical therapy, and also has an ER to provide around the clock emergency care.
Other nearby hospitals include Nicklaus Children’s Hospital near South Miami, about three miles away from Mount Sinai’s new Westchester complex, and Jackson West in Doral, about four miles away. Other hospitals relatively close to Westchester include HCA Florida Kendall Hospital, Coral Gables Hospital, Baptist Hospital of Miami, Baptist South Miami Hospital and Larkin Community Hospital’s South Miami campus.
