Lake Nona is slated to get a new nonprofit rehabilitation hospital to provide care for patients who have suffered from brain, spinal cord or orthopedic injuries or strokes.
Jacksonville-based Brooks Rehabilitation will start construction on a 60-bed rehab hospital in late 2021 inside the master-planned community in southeast Orlando. The organization expects to hire 170-200 new employees once the hospital is built, CEO Doug Baer told Orlando Business Journal.
A construction team for the project has not been selected.
“We are in the early stages of planning for the new hospital, so we don’t have the specific details yet,” Baer said. “It will be located in the heart of Lake Nona’s health and life sciences district.”
The hospital will have the space to double its bed count eventually if needed.
“Brooks Rehabilitation’s hospital brings a new, specialized, medically complex rehabilitation solution to the Central Florida community further enhancing our region’s robust health care ecosystem with plenty of room to grow into the future,” Rasesh Thakkar, senior managing director of Tavistock Group, said in a prepared statement. “What impressed us further about Brooks is their commitment to research and education in addition to specialized care, enhancing people’s lives not just in the present, but innovating continuously with an eye to a brighter future.”
When completed, the hospital will join Nemours Children’s Hospital, Orlando VA Medical Center and the soon-to-open UCF Lake Nona Medical Center in Lake Nona. UCF’s hospital with Nashville, Tennessee-based HCA Healthcare Inc. is set to open in March 2021.
In Central Florida, Brooks operates a 40-bed inpatient rehabilitation hospital in partnership with Halifax Health in Daytona Beach. Brooks’ portfolio includes a research center, 40 outpatient therapy clinics, assisted-living and memory care facilities, two skilled nursing facilities, a 160-bed hospital in Jacksonville and a future second hospital in Jacksonville set to break ground in the coming months.
The planned Brooks hospital in Lake Nona is not the only rehab hospital being built in Central Florida. Birmingham, Alabama-based Encompass Health Corp. plans to build a 100-bed, 83,500-square-foot facility in Clermont on State Road 50. That facility will be built out in multiple bed phases and the hospital is expected to open in 2022.
Source: OBJ