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The Savannah, GA 55+ Healthcare Guide: Which Hospital Is Actually Near You

Hospital proximity rarely makes anyone’s top-three list on a first visit to Savannah — the marsh views and the historic squares get all the attention. It moves up the list within a few years of moving in. Here is an honest, hedged look at what actually serves the Savannah-area 55+ market, from the flagship hospitals downtown to the newer outpatient campuses in Pooler and Richmond Hill.

Coastal Georgia · Updated 2026

The two hospital systems that cover metro Savannah

Chatham County and the surrounding coastal Georgia counties are served primarily by two hospital systems: St. Joseph’s/Candler, a not-for-profit Catholic system with two acute-care hospitals in Savannah, and Memorial Health University Medical Center, an HCA Healthcare-affiliated academic medical center that is the region’s designated Level I trauma center — recertified as recently as 2023 according to local reporting. Between the two systems, most of what a 55+ buyer would reasonably need — cardiology, orthopedics, oncology, emergency and trauma care — is available within the city of Savannah itself. The more interesting question for buyers looking at Richmond Hill, Pooler, or the outer suburbs is what’s available closer to where they’d actually live.

What’s actually near Richmond Hill and Del Webb Heartwood

Richmond Hill, in Bryan County, is where Del Webb Savannah at Heartwood — the metro’s one genuinely age-restricted community of scale — is being built. St. Joseph’s/Candler has opened a facility inside the Heartwood master plan itself: the Richmond Hill Campus at Heartwood. Based on what the system publishes about that location, it functions as an urgent care and primary-care/physician-office campus rather than a full inpatient hospital with its own emergency department and surgical suites. That is still a meaningful convenience — same-day and routine care essentially inside the community — but for a hospital-level emergency, inpatient stay, or anything requiring surgery or a trauma team, Richmond Hill residents would still drive into Savannah proper to Candler Hospital, St. Joseph’s Hospital, or Memorial. That drive is reasonable by coastal Georgia standards but is a real drive, not a golf-cart ride, and buyers who want the numbers should verify current travel time themselves.

What’s actually near Pooler

Pooler, home to the Savannah Quarters-area golf communities such as Westbrook Villas and the Fairways discussed on our Savannah hub, has its own St. Joseph’s/Candler Pooler Campus. As with Richmond Hill, published information on this location describes it as an urgent-care and outpatient physician campus, not a full acute-care hospital. Pooler sits along I-16 with a reasonably direct run into Savannah’s hospital corridor, but again — verify the actual drive time from the specific address you’re considering rather than relying on a general “Pooler is close to Savannah” assumption.

Skidaway Island and the Savannah/Chatham core

Communities on Skidaway Island, such as The Landings, and the in-town Savannah/Chatham County options are, by virtue of being closest to the city itself, generally the shortest drive to both St. Joseph’s/Candler hospitals and to Memorial. That proximity is one of the genuine trade-offs against Richmond Hill’s newer construction and Bryan County’s different tax treatment — covered in detail on our total cost comparison.

What this means if you have a specific condition

If you or a spouse has an existing relationship with a cardiologist, oncologist, or other specialist in Savannah, ask directly which hospital or system that physician is affiliated with, and whether that affiliation would change if you moved to Richmond Hill or Pooler versus staying inside Chatham County. If you have no specific known condition, the honest summary is: metro Savannah has two credible hospital systems and a Level I trauma center, all within the city, and the outer communities have real but limited outpatient care closer to home. Neither Richmond Hill nor Pooler should be read as “far from care” — but neither should be assumed to have a full hospital at the gate, either.

Frequently Asked Questions