El Rio Health Opens Its Largest Tucson Center on Stone Avenue, and It's Adding Staff
Published: June 8, 2026 | By TucsonHIRED Team
TUCSON, AZ — One of the biggest healthcare openings of the year is now live on the north side. El Rio Health's new flagship center, a 95,000-square-foot facility at 4888 N. Stone Ave., opened June 1 in the long-vacant former Tucson Heart Hospital. It's one of the largest community health centers in the country, and as it ramps up toward serving 22,000 patients a year, El Rio plans to add providers and staff, making it a healthcare hiring story worth watching in Tucson.
A building empty for 14 years is now a working clinic again.
El Rio's New Center at a Glance
| Facility | El Rio Health flagship center |
| Address | 4888 N. Stone Ave., Tucson (Stone Avenue at River Road) |
| Size | About 95,000 square feet on a roughly 10-acre site |
| Services | Medical, dental, behavioral health, and a drive-thru pharmacy |
| Capacity | Designed to serve up to 22,000 patients |
| Status | Opened June 1, 2026; adding providers and staff |
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From Vacant Hospital to Flagship Clinic
The former Tucson Heart Hospital sat empty for 14 years before El Rio, working with Meridian and Tenet Healthcare, gutted and rebuilt the interior into a modern health center. Staff and thousands of patients from El Rio's Northwest Health Center on West Prince Road are shifting to the larger Stone Avenue location, which lets the organization put far more services under one roof in the same community it already serves.
Why This Is a Hiring Story
El Rio has said it expects to add providers and employees to support patient growth in the coming year. A center this size, offering medical, dental, behavioral health, and pharmacy services, runs on a deep bench of clinical and support staff. El Rio has been one of Southern Arizona's anchor healthcare employers for more than 55 years, and a new flagship of this scale typically keeps a steady stream of openings posted.
What It Means for Job Seekers
Healthcare roles to watch as the center staffs up include:
- Registered nurses and medical assistants
- Primary care providers, NPs, and PAs
- Dental providers and dental assistants
- Behavioral health counselors and case managers
- Pharmacy technicians and pharmacists
- Front desk, scheduling, and patient support staff
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A north-side building that sat dark for over a decade is full of patients and staff again. For Tucson's healthcare workers, that's a lot of new doors to walk through.
