Business Report, North Central Florida
The University of Florida may be the face of Gainesville, but health care is its economic backbone.
When Dr. Kenneth Berns arrived in Gainesville in 1976, health care was like a teenager showing lots of promise but still finding itself.
Alachua County Hospital had just moved into a new cornerstone building a year earlier. The 480-bed Veterans Administration Hospital was only nine years old. North Florida Regional Medical Center, founded in 1972, was just getting off the ground.
And the 465-bed Shands Teaching Hospital? […]