Moffitt at SouthShore Brings Care to South Hillsborough Patients
Jojo Boggs is looking forward to saving some time and avoiding Tampa traffic, thanks to the new Moffitt Cancer Center at Southshore location scheduled to open in January 2025.
Boggs is a Moffitt patient who lives in Seminole, Fla., but helps run her family’s jewelry store in Sun City Center alongside her husband and grandhchildren. The convenience of the new ambulatory clinic in Ruskin will make cancer care much easier for those in South Hillsborough and North Manatee counties, she said.
“I’m still alive because of Moffitt,” said Boggs, who was treated for uterine cancer and rectal cancer at the cancer center’s Magnolia location. “Sun City Center is the perfect spot for Moffitt because the elderly down here can’t commute as easily and many of them can’t drive. This brings the care they need directly to them, and Moffitt will save even more lives.”
That is exactly why Moffitt is building in Ruskin, according to Jazmin Calzada, director of Nursing and Ambulatory Clinic Operations at Moffitt.
“There is a lot of excitement around this new campus, and it is another example of Moffitt bringing its oncology expertise directly to the communities it serves,” Calzada said. “Moffitt at SouthShore will offer many of the same services as the Magnolia and McKinley campuses and will focus on a robust radiology program.”
This satellite campus, currently under construction on the corner of East College Avenue and 25th Street South in Ruskin, will bring the cancer center’s oncology specialists to South Hillsborough County for the first time. Moffitt conducted extensive research on patient volumes and found that a large number come from south of the cancer center’s Magnolia campus at the University of South Florida.
Jojo Boggs works alongside her grandchildren at their family-owned jewelry store in Sun City Center.
Moffitt at SouthShore will be much more convenient for patients from Brandon and Sun City Center and is expected to serve nearly 9,000 patients within its first five years of operation.
“I tell people to get checked out so that they can get things taken care of right away,” said Boggs, when asked what advice she gives to friends and family about cancer care. “At Moffitt they don’t diagnose you and then forget you. They have the know-how and the technology that is so far advanced that it amazes me.”
Patients can begin scheduling appointments at Moffitt at SouthShore this fall, about three months before the doors open, Calzada said.
The 75,000-square-foot facility at 2709 E. College Ave. in Ruskin sits on 9 acres and will be home to 18 exam rooms and 10 bays strictly for blood draws. The new facility will offer everything the other campuses in Tampa offer to patients except for surgical procedures and inpatient stays. Those patients will still need to travel to Tampa, Calzada said.
“But radiology imaging, labs, chemotherapy infusions, radiation therapy and clinic appointments with cancer experts of all types will be available here,” Calzada said.
That expertise, Boggs said, will change the lives of many patients who struggle to get the medical care they need. She said she was fortunate to have family and friends help her get to her appointments at various hospitals, including Moffitt, during her treatment.
“I was in a wheelchair for a year,” Boggs said. “One doctor told me I would never walk again. As a woman, and you know women, you tell us we can’t do something we will find a way to get it done. I’m walking now, thanks to the care I received at Moffitt.”
In June, Moffitt doctors told Boggs that there was no sign of cancer in her body, words she has longed to hear since she was first diagnosed in 2018.
“I tell you; Moffitt has everything, and this is going to change people’s lives,” Boggs said. “Plus, they treat you like family and they know your name. I tell everybody that Moffitt is where they need to go.”
