Health Care

The Williamsburg area has become known for things other than tourism in the past 20 years—as a bedroom community for both Richmond and Hampton Roads, and as a mecca for second-home owners and early retirees (must be that “play golf 11 months a year” thing).

Those two factors have combined to nearly double the region’s population, and to skew its age higher than the median for Virginia. In turn, that has led to an explosion in health-care facilities in the area. Two competing groups—Norfolk-based Sentara Healthcare, and Newport News–based Riverside Health Systems—have fought to years to become the dominant system in the area, building or planning a range of new facilities—specialty physician offices, outpatient surgery and treatment centers, and not one but two full-service hospitals.

As a result, the Williamsburg area offers virtually every medical service available in major metro areas.

The centerpiece of medical services, at the moment, is the new Sentara Williamsburg Regional Medical Center. It opened in 2006 as part of a 120-acre medical campus off Mooretown Road in York County.

The $96.4 million facility has 145 acute-care beds, and is surrounded by an outpatient care center, physician offices, and other ancillary services. It replaced the Williamsburg Community Hospital, originally built in 1961, near the William and Mary campus.

Riverside is building, too, convincing state officials in 2009 of the need for a second hospital in Williamsburg. Doctors Hospital—a $72 million, 40-bed facility near the junction of US Route 60 and Virginia Route 199, not far from Kingsmill and Busch Gardens, is expected to open in early 2012.