By Ryan Lynch – Staff Writer, Orlando Business Journal
Hospital Corp. of America (NYSE: HCA) broke ground today on its new freestanding emergency room at 4050 Millenia Blvd. in Orlando, which is scheduled to open in early 2019.
The facility, dubbed Millenia ER, is one of three new freestanding ERs HCA plans to build, with the other two slated for Baldwin Park in Orlando and International Parkway in Sanford. HCA now has just one freestanding ER, which is in Hunter's Creek. It will serve as a model for the new three facilities, which each will offer 24/7 emergency care, a dedicated trauma room, lab services, a pharmacy and have a total of 11 beds.
The 1.63-acre site near the Mall at Millenia will feature a $10 million, 10,280-square-foot, one-story facility. It will create about 50 jobs when it opens and some medical residents from the University of Central Florida School of Medicine will work there as part of their education.
CPPI from Gainesville is the general contractor and Hereford Dooley Architects from Nashville, Tenn., is the project architect. Construction will start this fall.
Nashville, Tenn.-based HCA chose the area for the facility because "even though it is very populated, it's underserved as far as access," HCA-owned Osceola Regional Medical Center CEO Davide M. Carbone told Orlando Business Journal. "People have to go to Dr. Phillips or downtown to get access to an ER, so it's kind of right in between those corridors to have an ER."
The new facility is part of a growing trend in the area to build more freestanding emergency centers. Freestanding emergency centers typically are owned and operated by licensed hospitals. The facilities are not connected to a main hospital campus but offer the same comprehensive 24/7 emergency services. The number of such facilities is on the rise in Florida, in part due to overcrowded ERs, and partly due to a desire to grow hospital system revenue.
Hospital systems eventually may expand them into full hospitals. For example, HCA's Oviedo ER, built in 2013, became a $109 million, 64-bed hospital called Oviedo Medical Center in 2017. If HCA later wants to expand the Millenia location into a hospital, it would need state approval.
The state had only 26 freestanding ERs in 2016 and that number has grown to 41, according to the Florida Agency For Health Care Administration. The total count will rise to 50-plus with the new Central Florida projects and may go even higher, since they fulfill a strategy for hospital systems to grow revenue by bringing emergency care closer to outlying, typically affluent suburbs, where people are more likely to be able to afford health care.
HCA also opened four CareNow Urgent Care Centers, which do not offer 24/7 emergency services. Locations include Sanford, Lake Mary and Winter Park. They offer quick care for non-emergency illnesses and injuries, as well as physicals, vaccinations, and general diagnostic and wellness check-ups. The CareNow Urgent Care centers together were estimated to create about 40 jobs, including physicians, nurses and technicians.
The for-profit HCA also owns Central Florida Regional Hospital in Sanford, Osceola Regional Medical Center in Kissimmee and Poinciana Medical Center in Kissimmee.