AdventHealth Kissimmee Plans $84M Patient Tower Expansion

AdventHealth once again will add on to its Kissimmee campus to meet the area’s growing health care needs.

The Altamonte Springs-based health care provider is set to build an $84 million, 123,000-square-foot expansion on top of its existing three-story patient tower. The three-story project, expected to be completed by fall 2021,will add 80 beds to AdventHealth Kissimmee and bring its total bed county to 240.

There will be 40 beds each on the fifth and sixth floors of the expansion, while the fourth floor will be held as shell space and can accommodate an additional 40 beds in the future, AdventHealth spokesman David Breen told Orlando Business Journal.

Expanding the hospital is needed, as it had an increased patient count in 2018 with more than 9,000 admissions and 67,000 emergency room visits. That’s up from 8,274 and 62,919 respectively for those totals in 2017, according to OBJ research.

“This investment illustrates our commitment to the health of the Kissimmee community,” AdventHealth Kissimmee CEO Sheila Rankin said in a prepared statement. “We are dedicated to providing whole-person care close to home for the growing population of Osceola County in the years to come.”

Preliminary elevator shaft work for the project already has begun, with work on the future floors expected to begin this fall. Nashville, Tennessee-based ESa is the architect on the project, and Birmingham, Alabama-based Brasfield & Gorrie L.L.C. is the general contractor.

The project is expected to create 500 construction jobs and a yet-to-be determined amount of health care positions, according to the company.

AdventHealth Kissimmee opened an expanded emergency department in 2014, along with the original 80-bed patient tower in July 2015. The hospital is currently in progress on a $26 million, 27,000-square-foot addition of four surgical rooms with state-of-the-art lighting, robotic services, camera and recording capabilities, set to be completed in January 2020.

Meanwhile, here are some more AdventHealth hospitals being built out or growing inpatient facilities in Central Florida:

• AdventHealth Winter Garden: A $200 million, 300,000-square-foot, seven-story 100-bed patient tower at 2000 Fowler Grove Blvd. Project should be completed in 2021.

• AdventHealth Celebration: $88 million, five-story patient tower at 400 Celebration Place in Celebration. Project initially will have 76 beds and includes shell space for up to 84 more beds at buildout. Completion expected in early 2020.

• AdventHealth Fish Memorial: $100 million, four-story expansion at 1055 Saxon Blvd. in Volusia County’s Orange City. Project will add 50 beds along with an expanded emergency department. Construction is expected to be completed by the end of 2020.

Founded in 1908, the $3.36 billion nonprofit AdventHealth system headed up by CEO Daryl Tol provided $45.3 million in uncompensated health care in 2016. In addition to the Kissimmee campus, its holdings include:

• 10 local hospitals in downtown Orlando, Altamonte Springs, Winter Park, east Orlando, Celebration, Winter Garden, Longwood and Apopka

• 24 Centra Care (urgent care) centers and 2 Kids Urgent Care centers

• 24 imaging and diagnostic centers

• 15 Lab Care locations

• 18 Sports Medicine & Rehab locations

• 2,500-plus doctors in 123 medical specialties

 

Source: OBJ

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Orlando Health Snaps Up 28 Acres In Osceola County

Orlando Health is setting up another potential expansion into Osceola County after closing on the purchase of a property near Interstate 4.

The $3.4 billion nonprofit health care provider bought a 28-acre parcel at 8011 Osceola Polk Line Road in Davenport near the Polk County line. The property, sold by EHOF Acquisitions II LLC for $14.4 million, previously was reported as a 25-acre parcel when Orlando Health went into contract on the property last July.

Currently the hospital is developing plans for the parcel and does not have a dedicated use set for it yet, Orlando Health spokeswoman Kena Lewis told Orlando Business Journal.

Orlando Health’s property will be part of a 108-acre mixed use development called Reunion Village. That project, owned by Encore Capital Management, currently is seeking hotels, shops, grocery and other concepts to be part of a 200,000-square-foot retail center, according to a LandQwest listing on the proposed development.

Meanwhile, the health care provider has locked up several other Central Florida properties in the past year:

• On Nov. 19, it paid $1.64 million for a roughly 1-acre parcel with an existing 18,000-square-foot office building at 1300 S. Division Ave., north of Kaley Avenue near its Orlando Regional Medical Center Campus.

• On May 25, it acquired a two-story, 72,000-square-foot building at 1000 W. Broadway St. in Oviedo from Oviedo Medical Properties LLC for $22.2 million, which it will use as medical office space.

• On Sept. 28, it bought a 1.5-acre parcel with a 30,000-square-foot warehouse at 1402 Sligh Blvd. for $2.03 million in downtown Orlando, which it previously leased from the seller, rail company CSX Corp. (Nasdaq: CSX).

• On June 18, it bought a vacant half-acre lot at 121 W. Copeland Drive in downtown Orlando for $833,500.

• Also in June, it purchased 15.13 vacant acres on the northeast corner of Dowden Road and Randal Park Boulevard in the Lake Nona area for roughly $9.9 million, where it will build a $140 million-$160 million hospital that already has gotten state approval.

• On Dec. 14, it bought 51 acres of former grazing land at 5401 Effie Drive in Apopka for $1.48 million from Orlando Beltway Associates Plymouth Sorrento LLC.

Orlando Health also expanded its footprint in Osceola with the $32 million, 60,000-square-foot Orlando Health Emergency Department & Medical Pavilion – Osceola County it opened at 1001 E. Osceola Parkway in Kissimmee on Jan. 3. That facility’s future phase 2 eventually will include a second 60,000-square-foot medical pavilion.

Orlando Health’s eight Central Florida hospitals have a total of 3,300-plus beds. It has the area’s only Level One Trauma Centers for adults and children, and is a teaching hospital system. Its hospitals are: Orlando Regional Medical Center, Dr. P. Phillips Hospital, South Seminole Hospital, Health Central Hospital, the Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children, Winnie Palmer Hospital for Women & Babies, South Lake Hospital and St. Cloud Regional Medical Center. It also owns 10 urgent care centers in the region, as well as several cancer centers, freestanding ERs and more. It is one of the region’s largest employers, with 23,000 workers.

 

Source:  OBJ

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Planned ‘Medical City’ Moves Ahead in Orlando

Local officials in Orlando, are reviewing a newly unveiled master plan for a proposed “medical city” with a senior housing component.

The project would include space for residential use, offices for physicians and clinicians and emergency and surgical facilities. All told, the plans have room for 955 apartments, and will offer assisted living, memory care, stroke and hospice services.

 

Source: Senior Housing News

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Florida ER Visits Hold Steady, Bucking National Trend

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, emergency visits climbed to a record high of 146 million patients nationally in 2016 – the most recent year available.

8.3 million of those patients were seen in Florida emergency rooms.

But the state Agency for Health Care Administration reports that the numbers in Florida have flattened since then, bucking the national trend.

Doctor Vidor Friedman, an Orlando doctor and president of the American College of Emergency Physicians, said that could be due in part to more urgent care use.

“I think patients who have insurance are being pushed into not going to the emergency department – if at all possible – by their insurance companies,” Friedman said.

Lakeland Regional Medical Center in Polk County had the highest number of emergency visits in Florida in 2017 at nearly 170,000.

While emergency visits have gone up overall, only 4.3% of patients nationally went to the ER with non-urgent medical symptoms, a decrease from previous years.

“What we’ve seen actually is that the acuity – in other words the people coming to emergency departments – are sicker overall,” Friedman said.

Illness continues to outpace injury as a reason people seek emergency care and the most frequently seen patients are children or senior citizens.

“Emergency physicians are uniquely qualified to provide essential care that patients can’t get anywhere else,” Friedman said. “Nearly two-thirds of visits occur after business hours, when other doctors’ offices are closed. Millions of patients rely on emergency physicians for rapid diagnosis and treatment of acute illness, while emergency departments are increasingly viewed as a hub for care and care transitions.”

The CDC data does not include freestanding emergency departments or urgent care centers.

 

Source: WUSF

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Florida Supreme Court Justices Reject Central Florida Hospital Plan

Just a day after the state House weighed in on the issue, the Florida Supreme Court on Thursday rejected a public-hospital system’s plan for a new hospital in western Volusia County.

Justices, in a 14-page decision, unanimously ruled that the Halifax Hospital Medical Center taxing district did not have legal authority to issue bonds to finance a hospital in Deltona, which is outside the district’s boundaries. The Supreme Court upheld a circuit judge’s ruling that said such a bond issue was invalid.

“(Part of state law that deals with Halifax) does not contain an express grant of authority for Halifax to operate hospitals outside the geographic boundaries established for the district and, when the relevant language is considered as a whole, only authorizes Halifax to operate within the district,” said the decision, written by Justice Alan Lawson.

The ruling came less than 24 hours after the House unanimously passed a bill that would change state law to allow the Daytona Beach-based Halifax to operate outside its boundaries. The bill (HB 523), sponsored by Rep. David Santiago, R-Deltona, is an outgrowth of the court battle, but it remains unclear whether the Senate will address the issue before the scheduled May 3 end of the annual legislative session.

Last month, Santiago told a House panel that Deltona has been “crying for many years” for a hospital.

“This is a big deal for my county,” Santiago said at the time.

Halifax has been working on the 96-bed hospital project for years, entering what is known as an “interlocal” agreement with the city of Deltona and obtaining a certificate of need — a key regulatory approval — from the state Agency for Health Care Administration in 2016, according to a brief filed at the Supreme Court.

But a January 2018 decision by the hospital district’s governing board to issue $115 million in bonds for the project drew a legal challenge from Volusia County resident Nancy Epps. Circuit Judge Christopher France ruled that Halifax didn’t have the “authority to issué bonds for the purpose of financing the planning, acquisition, construction, or installing of the proposed Deltona Hospital outside of its geographic district boundaries.”

In appealing to the Supreme Court, Halifax attorneys said, in part, that Halifax has long operated facilities and provided services outside the district boundaries, including in Deltona.

But the Supreme Court agreed with the circuit judge and pointed to a general rule that special districts “are created to operate within their defined geographic boundaries.”

“In other words, although the Legislature certainly can grant a special district authority to operate outside of its defined geographic boundary, that extraordinary grant of authority would need to be express and unambiguous — clear enough to demonstrate that the Legislature has created a special district that will operate with a power not generally contemplated for … special districts,” Lawson wrote.

 

Source: Fox35

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