BayCare Expands St. Pete Footprint

The BayCare Health System released its 2025 Report to the Community April 7, showing operating revenue rose to $6.97 billion, up from $6.27 billion a year earlier. Community benefit spending also increased, reaching $500 million in 2025.

That spending includes charity care, support for underinsured patients and a range of health-related social services. For St. Petersburg, the larger story is how those dollars translate into care capacity and neighborhood-level support.

At St. Anthony’s Hospital, BayCare opened a dedicated neurology intensive care unit in 2025, adding a higher level of care for patients facing complex neurosurgical procedures and recovery. The move builds on BayCare’s wider effort to keep more specialized treatment within the region rather than sending patients elsewhere.

The hospital is also playing a larger role in BayCare’s neuroscience work. In 2025, BayCare launched 26 neuroscience research projects focused on conditions including stroke, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, headaches and myasthenia gravis. That gives St. Anthony’s a more prominent place in the system’s academic and specialty-care network.

St. Anthony’s deployed two autonomous mobile robots that transport medications and lab specimens through the building, helping staff spend more time on patient care. BayCare said the robots completed 23,702 trips in 2025, traveled 3,350 miles and saved 7,696 staff hours.

BayCare continued its partnership with the St. Pete Free Clinic as part of a broader effort to help uninsured and under-resourced residents access care. The health system also continued addressing food insecurity, which remains one of the region’s most persistent health challenges.

Across its service area, BayCare supported 42 school-based food pantries, distributed more than 11,000 food bags to patients facing food insecurity and recorded more than 20,000 visits at its three food clinics. In its latest community health assessment, 16% of respondents identified as food insecure, with that figure rising to 20% among households with children.

At St. Anthony’s, the system also highlighted a smaller but telling initiative called Threads for Care, which provides new clothes and essential items to patients leaving the hospital. The program reflects a broader healthcare reality: needs tied to recovery often include basics such as food, clothing and transportation.

BayCare remains a major presence in the regional healthcare landscape. The system says one in three healthcare services in West Central Florida is performed through BayCare. Its network includes 16 hospitals, physician offices, imaging centers, urgent care locations and home-care services spread across multiple counties.

Much of the system’s major capital expansion in 2025 happened outside Pinellas, including a new hospital project in Manatee County and planned freestanding emergency departments in Valrico, Davenport and Lakeland.