Jackson Memorial Hospital Emergency Department Expansion

The first phase opened to patients on April 23, 2026. Jackson Health System confirmed completion in early July.

Jackson Memorial’s new emergency department is a $400 million bet that the busiest ER in Miami-Dade County can stop sending patients into the main hospital for routine imaging. Skanska USA Building is the builder, HKS the architect, and the work happened on a live campus that never closed.

Project Scope

Phase 1 delivered 178,000 square feet of new construction: 60 general exam rooms, four resuscitation rooms, six triage rooms and 12 fast-track rooms. A dedicated second floor holds 50 observation rooms plus seven acute care beds. The radiology suite is in-house, with MRI, CT, X-ray and ultrasound, and there’s an on-site pharmacy.

Getting there meant demolishing two existing buildings on an operating hospital campus. That enabling work was a discrete $90 million award to Skanska in 2023, before the main construction package.

Phase 2, now underway, renovates the existing 45,000-sf department and adds 121 adult emergency rooms, 30 pediatric rooms and dedicated behavioral health bays. A third phase adds a new floor and a rooftop helipad to complement the one already serving the Ryder Trauma Center.

Why It Matters

Funding came from the $830 million Jackson Miracle-Building general obligation bond program, part of a 10-year, $2 billion capital plan, plus a record $100 million raised by the Jackson Health Foundation specifically for the ER. Named donors include the Lennar Foundation, Related Group, Royal Caribbean Group Foundation and the Batchelor Foundation.

Jackson is a public safety-net hospital. Phasing an expansion of this size through an emergency department that can’t divert patients is the hard part, and the reason the schedule runs to 2027 rather than 2026.

Project Team & Details