In-Home Care for Hastings and Flagler Estates in Rural St. Johns County

ZIP 32145 is the Postal Service’s Hastings: about 90 square miles of land in southwestern St. Johns County. Hastings began in 1890, when Henry Flagler asked his cousin Thomas Horace Hastings to start a farm to feed his hotel guests. The settlement that grew up around its Florida East Coast Railway stop became known as the Potato Capital of Florida, and UF/IFAS still runs potato trials at its Hastings Agricultural Extension Center, where the crop goes in at the end of winter and comes out in early summer. The town itself no longer exists as a government. It had about 620 residents by 2015, and on November 7, 2017, 136 of the 165 ballots cast on the question voted to revoke its charter, with residents citing about $1 million in accumulated debt and high water and sewer bills. Since March 2018 Hastings has been unincorporated St. Johns County, and the old Town Hall, a former high school, belongs to the county. Main Street is coming back: the state made downtown Hastings a Florida Main Street community in December 2023, and Hastings Main Street puts on a yearly Cabbage, Potato, and Bacon Festival on North Main Street.

Most people in 32145 don’t live in the old town. The Census Bureau’s 2020–2024 American Community Survey estimates put about 5,760 residents in the ZIP code, most of them in Flagler Estates, about 15 minutes’ drive southeast of Main Street. By the same survey, 32145 is not an especially old ZIP code. Its median age, 44.1, matches the county’s 44.2; about 16.6% of residents are 65 or older, against 21.1% countywide; and 29% of households include someone that age, against 36%. The median household income is about $75,600, against about $109,800 for St. Johns County. The samples are small, so every figure here is approximate, especially the roughly 125 residents 65 and older who live alone. What sets this ZIP code apart for an aging parent is distance: a fall at the end of a long rural road can go unnoticed for hours when no one is expected. Hourly care puts someone in the house on the days that matter most, companion care takes on the errands and the company, and personal care covers bathing and dressing. Our office is at Nocatee Town Center, about 50 minutes’ drive north, and the phone at (904) 204-2046 is answered around the clock. For the team and how we work, start with home care across Ponte Vedra; if you live in or near Hastings and want caregiving work close to home, see our caregiver jobs.

Hastings sits between two hospitals, one each way along State Road 207, and since July 14, 2026, it has had a closer emergency room. AdventHealth Treaty Oaks ER, at 1775 SR 207 just east of I-95, is about 20 minutes’ drive from Main Street in free-flowing traffic: a 12-bed freestanding emergency department, open around the clock, with a lab, X-ray, ultrasound and CT scanning. UF Health Flagler Hospital, the 335-bed hospital at 400 Health Park Boulevard in St. Augustine, is about 27 minutes from Main Street, 17 miles, most of it on SR 207. HCA Florida’s hospital in Palatka, at 611 Zeagler Drive, is about 24 minutes the other way by SR 207 and US 17. It is a 99-bed hospital with a 10-bed intensive care unit, a cardiac catheterization lab, a 24-hour emergency department, and inpatient and outpatient rehabilitation. From the middle of Flagler Estates the drives are longer: about 35 minutes to Treaty Oaks, 36 to Palatka and 41 to Flagler Hospital. Everyday medicine is closer. Aza Health’s clinic at 201 West Lattin Street in Hastings sees patients Monday through Thursday, accepts Medicaid and most insurance, and offers a sliding fee to patients who qualify.

Those distances shape the weeks after a discharge. A son or daughter in Jacksonville or St. Augustine can’t easily make the trip twice a day, and the first nights home are when a parent most needs someone in the house. Our hospital-to-home care starts on discharge day: the drive home, prescriptions picked up on the way, meals that follow the discharge instructions, and help in and out of the shower. Then come the follow-up visits, each close to an hour of round-trip driving before the appointment starts, and the therapy sessions after a broken hip or a stroke. Our caregivers can do the driving, sit through the visit and bring the notes home to you, and mobility care covers the steady arm from the car to the door and the daily walks a therapist asks for. If the doctor orders nursing or therapy visits at home, our caregivers cover the hours in between. We are a non-medical, private-pay agency that accepts long-term care insurance and doesn’t bill Medicare or Medicaid, and every plan starts with a free in-home assessment, with a registered nurse on our staff.