Orlando Health and HCA Healthcare inc. will build a total of three new Central Florida hospitals, thanks to getting approval Dec. 7 from the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration.

Nashville, Tenn.-based HCA (NYSE: HCA) and Orlando Health got the greenlight for their requested new facilities from the August 2018 batching cycle. The approvals are required before any new hospitals can be built.

The general acute-care hospital projects that got the thumbs up are:

• The 100-bed Orlando Health Lake Mary Hospital, planned for a 30-acre site at 380 Rinehart Road in Lake Mary

• The 50-bed Orlando Health Randal Park Hospital slated for 9349 Randal Park Blvd. in southeast Orlando

• The 40-bed Central Florida Regional Hospital International Parkway (CFRHIP) to be built at 4525 International Parkway in Sanford

It’s unknown if competitor Florida Hospital, soon to be known as AdventHealth, will appeal these approvals. Florida Hospital executives couldn’t be reached for comment.

Orlando Health, a $3.4 billion nonprofit health care system, on June 18 paid roughly $9.9 million for 15.13 acres of vacant land at the northeast corner of Dowden Road and Randal Park Boulevard for the Randal Park facility. That new hospital will allow the nonprofit to operate in the growing community near Lake Nona, and will reduce crowding at Orlando Regional Medical Center, Orlando Health said in its proposal.

Phase 1 of the project, which would include a freestanding emergency room and outpatient medical office, would start in 2019 and finish in 2020. Phase 2 would have operations begin in 2022. A third phase would allow expansion of medical office capabilities and inpatient facilities, but a timeline wasn’t included.

Orlando Health also is moving forward on its Rinehart Road project, the site of its $42 million, 30-acre freestanding emergency room and medical pavilion now under construction. This new $140 million to $160 million hospital includes 100 acute care beds being delicensed from South Seminole Hospital, Orlando Health spokesman Desmond Jordon told Orlando Business Journal. Renovating the existing South Seminole campus would have cost $310 million to $320 million, and would cause disruption to the services at the facility, Orlando Health said in its proposal.

Phase 1 of the Rinehart Road project is the medical pavilion, which should be completed in August 2019, and operations for Phase 2 are slated to begin in 2022. The second $360 million phase of the hospital will include the patient bed tower, and other health and wellness concepts. Once complete, Orlando Health’s Lake Mary campus will join a growing medical building hub in the area, informally referred to as the Rinehart Medical Corridor.

Meanwhile, HCA’s project will include a new adult psychiatric program with a minimum of 14 beds, according to the proposal. Central Florida Regional Hospital will relocate 21 of its medical/surgical beds and all of its 19 obstetrics beds to the proposed 40-bed facility. The health care provider does not list a timeline nor a projected construction cost for the facility.

HCA is one of the largest, private health systems in Florida, featuring 50 hospitals across the state and 31 surgery centers. Its local facilities are: Central Florida Regional Hospital, Oviedo Medical Center, Osceola Regional Medical Center and Poinciana Medical Center. It also is partnering with the University of Central Florida on the $175 million UCF Lake Nona Medical Center, which will be a teaching hospital slated to open in fall 2020.

Source: OBJ