Critics of UCF’s plans
to build a 100-bed teaching hospital worry the university is planning a community hospital instead. Today, UCF officials will appear before a board and once again make its case for the facility.
UCF officials will appear in front of the board that oversees state universities once again today to make a case for a 100-bed hospital they’re planning to build in a partnership with for-profit hospital chain HCA.
The officials are expected to answer a series of questions that the Board of Governors raised after the school’s presentation at the Jan. 25 meeting. Some of those concerns mirror the issues raised by Central Florida’s nonprofit health systems Orlando Health and Florida Hospital.
Critics are taking issue with some of the language in the application for the deal, and they say that it’s not specific enough to prove that HCA is indeed planning on building a teaching hospital and not a community hospital.
UCF officials say that HCA is committed to investing in residencies at the hospital, which is a sign of its commitment to build a teaching hospital and the partnership agreement protects UCF and will cost taxpayers no money.
Building a teaching hospital has been part of Dr. Deborah German’s plans since she founded the medical school a decade ago. The school has already received preliminary “certificate of need” approval from the state, but it also needs the Board of Governor’s OK to move forward.
The partnership received hundreds of letters of support, but local nonprofit health systems filed separate letters of opposition when the state was reviewing the certificate of need applications last fall.
Orlando Health wrote that the UCF-HCA application makes the notion of teaching hospital only speculative and took issue with the size of the hospital. A 100-bed teaching facility “is smaller in size than the average academic medical center nationally,” the health system wrote.
Florida Hospital asked the state to void the certificate of need if the Board of Governors doesn’t approve the project, and require the hospital to be built adjacent to the medical school and provide regular progress reports about attaining teaching hospital status.
Florida Hospital has also appealed the state’s certificate of need decision, sending it to Division of Administrative Hearings, where the case has been assigned a judge. The case is currently on hold pending the Board of Governors’ vote.
In 2012, the school bought the 25-acre lot, adjacent to the College of Medicine in Lake Nona for $15 million. And last fall, after a call for applications, it chose HCA has a partner to build the teaching hospital and applied to the state for the certificate of need.
“As we approach this important meeting of Board of Governors, I hope that the decision that supports the missions of the medical school to achieve them will be the outcome,” German said in an interview on Tuesday. “And at the same time, [I hope] our relationship with all of our hospitals will continue to thrive and grow.”