Busy year coming for hospital construction
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January isn’t over yet and Oviedo Medical Center has unveiled its brand new 64-bed hospital, South Lake Hospital has broken ground on a free-standing emergency department in Leesburg, and Orlando Health has begun the first phase of its hospital campus at Horizon West in West Orange County. And there’s more to come.
Local hospital systems have a full schedule of ground-breakings and ribbon cuttings for facilities this year, ranging from new hospitals to free-standing emergency departments and medical office buildings.
In a highly competitive market, Orlando Health, Florida Hospital and the national chain HCA are grabbing different corners of Central Florida to build inpatient and outpatient facilities that can capture the business of the area’s steadily growing population.
“Most other areas in the country are trying to figure out how to get rid of [hospitals] and they’re talking about creative re-use. But in Florida we’re building and expanding,” said Anne Spencer, director of healthcare practice group at Cushman & Wakefield, a real estate firm.
Its new 120-bed Florida Hospital Apopka campus is opening later this year, which will be an upgrade to the health system’s older hospital that will shut down.
And in the next few months, the health system will start building a stand-alone 24-bed emergency department in Waterford Lakes. It will also begin the construction of Project Wellness in Winter Park — a partnership with Winter Park Health Foundation.
The health system’s Winter Park Memorial Hospital is beginning construction on a five-story patient pavilion on the east side of the facility.
“I see us continuing to grow in multiple locations throughout the community,” said Tim Burill, vice president of facilities management for the health system. “It’s diverse in the offerings and goes back to getting closer to patients and where they live. And that means new facilities in places we’ve not been before.”
It’s a “fair assumption,” he added, that the hospital will be building more urgent-care centers too.
Orlando Health, the region’s other major health system, is focusing this year on developing what it dubs “Health Pavilions” — a flexible design of services and buildings tailored to meet each particular market’s demands, said CEO David Strong.
The first of those, the Spring Lake Health Pavilion in the Dr. Phillips area, is expected to open in the coming days. Another pavilion is slated to open in spring in Summerport on Winter Garden Vineland Road. Both will offer primary care, specialty care, imaging, laboratory services.
“Globally, you see a movement toward ambulatory and outpatient care, which are easier and cheaper for consumers,” said Strong. “And that [trend] will continue.”
On Thursday, Orlando Health began the construction of a freestanding emergency department at its Horizon West medical campus near State Road 429. It will start building an accompanying 103-bed hospital tower next year.
South Lake Hospital, which is part-owned by Orlando Health, is building two health pavilions with free-standing emergency departments. The Health Pavilion at Blue Cedar in Leesburg near U.S. Highway 27 and Florida’s Turnpike broke ground earlier this month, and another one at Four Corners at the junction of U.S. 27 and U.S. Highway 192 in Lake County, is expected to open later this year.
“As more people come to Central Florida, more hospitals will come online and come out of the ground,” said Spencer of Cushman & Wakefield. “I can’t tell you how many, but it’ll be interesting to see where each hospital system will stake their claim and where everyone’s territory going to be.”