Beebe Healthcare breaks ground in Millsboro
Beebe Healthcare has broken ground for its newest health campus in Millsboro, which will be anchored by a hybrid freestanding emergency department.
A ceremony was held Dec. 17 at the site on Sheep Pen Road, at the western end of the new Millsboro bypass. It is adjacent to the Plantation Lakes community.
The building will have a 48,000-square-foot first floor, which will include 16 emergency exam and treatment rooms and two dedicated pediatric rooms staffed by Nemours children’s health specialists; 12 non-emergency walk-in care rooms; advanced diagnostics imaging, including CT, MRI and mammography; and an on-site lab and retail pharmacy. There will also be a landing pad for helicopters.
Medical office space will be added to the second and third floors in future phases.
The campus has additional land that would allow Beebe to grow or add community resources.
Dr. David Tam, Beebe Healthcare president and CEO, said the new campus is a big part of Beebe’s vision for community-focused care.
“When I’m sitting in my office in Lewes and I see a Millsboro rig coming in, I think about how they spent an hour on the road coming to the Lewes ER,” Tam said. “This campus changes that. It keeps care in Sussex County and close to community members’ homes.”
Robbie Murray, director of Sussex County EMS and public safety, said the Millsboro campus will serve the same function as Beebe’s South Coastal emergency department in Millville.
Murray said EMS has transported 8,500 patients to that facility since it opened in May 2020.
“We estimate that every patient we can transport to South Coastal, we’re able to get an ambulance or paramedic unit back in service at least one hour quicker. We look forward to that same thing happening here in central Sussex County,” Murray said.
TidalHealth broke ground on a 150,000-square-foot Millsboro campus in August, about a mile from the Beebe location. That campus will have some of the same services as the Beebe facility.
But, Tam said, it is not a competition between the two healthcare providers.
“This is a completely different model of care than what other people are doing,” he said. “This is an ER, which nobody has put out. This is also a pediatric ER, which nobody has put out. This is the model we want to build, and we have to make sure it is right for the people of Millsboro.”
No timetable was given for when the campus will open.
Bill Shull has been covering Lewes for the Cape Gazette since 2023. He comes to the world of print journalism after 40 years in TV news. Bill has worked in his hometown of Philadelphia, as well as Atlanta and Washington, D.C. He came to Lewes in 2014 to help launch WRDE-TV. Bill served as WRDE’s news director for more than eight years, working in Lewes and Milton. He is a 1986 graduate of Penn State University. Bill is an avid aviation and wildlife photographer, and a big Penn State football, Eagles, Phillies and PGA Tour golf fan. Bill, his wife Jill and their rescue cat, Lucky, live in Rehoboth Beach.
