Growth will become a life-and-death matter when it impacts health care on Treasure Coast

It's hard to live in Florida, ranked as one of the fastest-growing states in the nation, and not think about how population growth is impacting us.

Even people who tend to "stay in their own lanes" can't help but notice some of the more obvious ways growth manifests itself, like more traffic on daily commutes or fewer trees to see during neighborhood walks.

However, a recent town hall hosted by Port St. Lucie Mayor Shannon Martin got me thinking about a much scarier way the Treasure Coast's ever-rising population could take its toll.

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The purpose of the meeting was to give residents of the Tradition neighborhood a chance to ask questions about how growth was impacting the delivery of city services. Several residents wanted to know what the city could do to slow or halt the pace of development there.

Martin's answer wasn't reassuring.

"If I could put a pause on this ... I would absolutely do it," she said. "But we don't have that ability."

Martin said the community had added 22,000 residents over the last two years. Lest you think she might have been exaggerating, according to U.S. Census data, the city's population grew from 204,851 on April 1, 2020, to an estimated 217,523 on July 1, 2021.

Viewed in that context, adding 11,000 residents per year certainly is possible and maybe even on the conservative side.

There doesn't appear to be any relief in sight, either. Woods & Poole Economics Inc. projected the Port St. Lucie metro area to be among the nation's 10 fastest growing, increasing from 511,300 residents last year to 920,600 by 2060. (The metro area includes all of St. Lucie and Martin counties, not just Port St. Lucie.)

That's a projected growth rate of more than 80%.

I haven't even gotten to the scary part yet. At the town hall meeting, a resident asked how the community's growth was impacting operations at Tradition Hospital, the community's primary health care facility.

The mayor didn't really have an answer for that. She mentioned a recent time when she spent 11 hours waiting at the hospital dealing with some type of medical incident. (Through a spokeswoman, Martin declined to share details about that incident with me.)

Which got me thinking about how growth could affect our ability to get medical treatment on the Treasure Coast in the years ahead.

It's kind of a depressing subject ― and apparently not one local health care providers are interested in discussing in great detail.

"This year marks 10 years since Cleveland Clinic’s Tradition Hospital opened," Madhu Sasidhar, the hospital's president, said in a prepared statement in response to my inquiry. "Since that time, we have seen tremendous growth in the Tradition area and population growth is projected to be a little over 4% each year over the next five years. We are committed to meeting the demand for our services and have already expanded once, nearly doubling the size of the facility."

Sasidhar also said the hospital recruited 109 new physicians to the Treasure Coast between 2020 and 2023. Additionally, clinical staff members rotate among each of Cleveland Clinic's Treasure Coast locations to provide greater access to care. And he said the local hospitals share resources with Cleveland Clinic's South Florida and Ohio campuses.

I wanted to know more, particularly if those types of hiring numbers were sustainable.

When a new subdivision or apartment complex sprouts up in a community, some employers struggle to find people able to fill job openings at restaurants and other service-oriented businesses.

Qualified doctors and nurses might be a bit harder to find. With nurses, that's especially concerning since we are in the midst of a national nursing shortage.

Through a spokeswoman (not the same one as the mayor's spokeswoman), Cleveland Clinic politely declined to further discuss growth's implications on the local health care industry.

I'll admit I'm a bit hypersensitive to these types of issues. During the COVID epidemic, I spent a week in a Colorado hospital's intensive care unit. Upon my arrival, the unit was full. The only ways for new spots to open up were for some of us to die or get better.

The epidemic was an extraordinary situation, for sure. But based on the population projections I've shared, I don't think it's alarmist to start thinking about how growth could literally become a life-or-death problem.

There's a provision in state law (Florida Statutes 163.3180) that allows local governments to restrict growth in areas where water and sewer facilities are deemed to be inadequate. Local governments have some authority to link growth restrictions to the availability of other types of public amenities, such as roads, as well.

However, I'm not aware of any provision in the law that allows growth to be restricted if adequate health care facilities aren't available. It seems like something should be done to address this, especially since our state's population skews toward the older end of the spectrum.

Maybe you've imagined a scenario where you're in the back of an ambulance that's stuck in traffic on the way to the hospital. That would be bad. It would be even worse to make it to the hospital, only to find out there wasn't adequate space or enough doctors or nurses to care for you.

When we reach that point, all the happy talk about growth helping the economy is going to ring a little hollow.

This column reflects the opinion of Blake Fontenay. Contact him via email at bfontenay@gannett.com or at 772-232-5424.

This article originally appeared on Treasure Coast Newspapers: Will population growth strangle Treasure Coast health care resources?