Lake Nona Rehabilitation Hospital Scrapped
A hospital by Brooks Rehabilitation in Orlando’s Lake Nona community no longer is happening.
The Jacksonville-based company is not pursing the location “given the constant change of the environment,” spokeswoman Jill Matejcek told Orlando Business Journal. Construction on the planned 60-bed rehab hospital originally was set to start in late 2021 and would have had space to expand.
“We still are committed to Orlando, but based on other Brooks projects and priorities, just not in the form of a rehabilitation hospital at this time,” Matejcek said. “We are focusing on the outpatient expansion.”
Brooks currently has five outpatient clinics in metro Orlando, and is scheduled to open four more in 2022, Matejcek said. The system may add additional clinics to that expansion effort by the end of this year.
A hospital from Brooks would have been the first dedicated orthopedic hospital in the southeast Orlando community, which features a children’s hospital from Nemours Children’s Health, the Orlando VA Medical Center and an acute care hospital from a partnership between the University of Central Florida and HCA Healthcare Inc.
Executives with Tavistock Group, the developer of Lake Nona, were not available for comment.
Rehabilitation care is one of the areas of health care that could see continued expansion in 2022, Henry W. Grady III, senior vice president and industry consultant for nonprofit hospitals and health systems at Truist, previously told Orlando Business Journal. The challenge is that many projects have gotten more expensive and the cost of capital has increased.
“It is a challenge to pass these higher costs along, so how these will be absorbed remains to be seen,” Grady said. “Surely this also will affect bottom line profitability in the coming quarters.”
Brooks currently has a 160-bed hospital in Jacksonville and a second 60-bed hospital in the city set to open in March. It has an inpatient facility in partnership with Halifax Health in Daytona Beach.
Source: OBJ
