What it means
Across most of metro Phoenix, Banner is the word for the hospital. “They took him to Banner” needs no further explanation in Mesa, Glendale or Gilbert, because Banner Health, the Phoenix-based nonprofit, runs the hospital in each of them and in a dozen other Valley cities. It is the largest private employer in Arizona, with more than 55,000 workers, and the largest hospital system, with 33 hospitals in six western states.
Scottsdale is the exception, and the exception is the point of this entry. Here “the hospital” means HonorHealth, which grew out of the 1962 Scottsdale Memorial Hospital on Osborn Road and runs the three hospitals inside the city limits; and “Mayo” means the Mayo Clinic campus on Shea Boulevard. You will hear Banner in Scottsdale mainly from people whose insurance network is Banner, from south Scottsdale residents who use Banner Desert in Mesa, and, since 2023, in the news about the campus Banner is building at Hayden Road and the Loop 101. The site’s guides to HonorHealth and Mayo Clinic in Arizona cover the systems that actually run Scottsdale’s medicine.
Where you’ll meet it
On freeway signs for Banner Desert, Banner Gateway and Banner University Medical Center; on the insurance card; in the north Scottsdale construction news along Hayden Road near Mayo Boulevard; and in any Valley-wide conversation about jobs, where Banner comes up first.
Where the word came from
The name is a corporate invention from 1999, and it replaced two older ones. Samaritan Health System had been the Phoenix name in hospitals for most of the century: Good Samaritan downtown, Desert Samaritan in Mesa, Thunderbird Samaritan in Glendale. Lutheran Health Systems, based in Fargo, North Dakota, ran small hospitals across the rural West and Midwest. On September 1, 1999, the two nonprofits announced a merger, and the combined company needed a name that belonged to neither. They chose Banner, a word with no history and no denomination, and put the headquarters in Phoenix. At the merger the system had 32 hospitals, 2,882 beds and 22,500 employees in 14 states.
The old names were retired hospital by hospital, so Desert Samaritan became Banner Desert Medical Center and Thunderbird Samaritan became Banner Thunderbird. Over the next two decades Banner sold or closed most of the far-flung Lutheran hospitals, concentrated on Arizona and a few neighboring states, and grew by building (Banner Gateway in Gilbert, Banner Estrella in the West Valley), by partnership (the Banner MD Anderson Cancer Center in Gilbert, opened in 2011) and by acquisition. The flagship, Banner University Medical Center Phoenix in central Phoenix, is a 746-bed teaching hospital. Revenue reached $14.1 billion in 2023.
Scottsdale stayed outside the map. The city’s hospitals were Scottsdale Memorial’s, which became Scottsdale Healthcare and then HonorHealth, and Mayo arrived in 1987. Banner’s presence here has been outpatient clinics, urgent cares and a behavioral health hospital, not a general hospital.
What it is not
Banner is not HonorHealth, and the two are not affiliated; they are competing nonprofits. Banner is also not the University of Arizona, though its Phoenix and Tucson flagships carry “University” in their names through an academic partnership. And “Banner Scottsdale,” which you will start hearing, is a campus under construction, not an open hospital.
The fine print
The Scottsdale project is the one piece of Banner news that matters locally, and its dates are easy to garble. Banner completed the purchase of a 48-acre parcel at the southwest corner of the Loop 101 and Hayden Road in March 2023 and announced a two-phase campus it values at more than $750 million in private investment. Phase one is a Banner Health Center plus, nearly 120,000 square feet of ambulatory surgery, imaging, pharmacy, multi-specialty clinics and Banner MD Anderson oncology services; it broke ground on May 22, 2025, and Banner expects to open it in early 2027. Phase two is Banner Scottsdale Medical Center, a full-service hospital of roughly 350,000 square feet with 106 beds at first build-out and room to grow toward 300; Banner filed its conditional use permit application with the city in July 2025, and the hospital’s opening date depends on that approval and on construction. Banner puts the eventual job count at about 2,500.
Why it took this long is the interesting question, and nobody at Banner has answered it in print. The plausible reading: Scottsdale was already served by two strong systems, its growth was slower than the East and West Valleys’, and the open land was in the north, which is where Banner finally bought. The site sits across the freeway from the Airpark employment base and near HonorHealth Thompson Peak and Mayo’s Shea campus, which tells you whose patients Banner expects to compete for.
The numbers above come from Banner’s own releases and from Wikipedia’s summary of them; Banner’s press materials describe the project as “$750 million-plus,” while a 2023 Scottsdale Progress report put it at $400 million, reflecting the earlier, smaller plan.