Osceola Regional Medical Center officials optimistic Poinciana hospital will be approved

May 23, 2006

Given the prolific growth in the 47,000-acre master-planned community of Poinciana, officials with Osceola Regional Medical Center (ORMC) are optimistic that Florida’s Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA) will rule in its favor on June 16 and give the go-ahead for the development of a hospital with up to 120 beds in Poinciana.

“We’ve done our due diligence and feel confident the hospital will be approved,” said Louis Caputo, associate administrator of ORMC which has contracted to purchase 40 acres in Poinciana from Avatar Properties Inc. for the planned hospital and a neighboring medical office building.

Caputo said once ORMC’s certificate of need application is approved by the State and there are no further delays, it will be approximately 855 days (about 2.3 years) from approval to initiation of service in the planned 3-story, 141,000 sq. ft. hospital which is estimated to cost $112 million.

“There is a distinct need for a hospital in Poinciana,” Caputo said at a recent Kissimmee/Osceola Chamber of Commerce luncheon in Poinciana.

The Poinciana hospital is planned to have 60 acute care beds, 52 medical/surgical beds, 8 ICU beds, and a staff of 225 in the first year. Based on current projections, a hospital in Poinciana would be 70 percent occupied within three years and have a staff of 1,355 by year five, according to ORMC’s application.

Caputo said the hospital also has been designed for two future floors should the need arise. That’s likely, he explained, given population estimates that note Osceola County will grow by 25 percent by the year 2010. Poinciana’s growth is expected to be even more prolific.

“The research we included in our application shows that in the next five years there will be 86,000 Poinciana residents living within a 10-mile radius of the hospital,” said Caputo.

Poinciana presently has a population in excess of 60,000 and the proposed hospital’s service area (zip codes 34746, 34758, 34759, and 33837) currently has a 6.1 percent annual growth rate which is significantly higher than the national average of 2.0 percent, Caputo said.

The most rapidly growing age group is persons 45 and older who historically have a higher use rate for inpatient hospital services, Caputo explained, noting that age group accounts for 45 percent of the service area’s population growth and is growing at over 7 percent annually. Many of them currently reside in Solivita, Avatar’s booming active-adult community which is located just about a block southwest of the proposed hospital site on Marigold Avenue.

The closest hospital to Poinciana is Osceola Regional Medical Center in Kissimmee, a 235-bed hospital offering state-of-the-art medical technology and healthcare services. It provides over 70 healthcare services and is the only hospital in Osceola County to provide Level II neonatal services and an open heart program.

Two other nearby hospitals are Heart of Florida Regional Medical Center in Davenport and Florida Hospital Celebration.

Heart of Florida and St. Cloud Regional Medical Center are both owned by Health Management Associates, the Naples-based company which is challenging ORMC’s certificate of need application.

Should the State approve ORMC’s application in June and further appeals and delays take place, Caputo said plans will still move forward for the development of a medical office building, a $6.5 million, 31,000 sq. ft. facility planned to initially house 31 physicians. He estimates 93 physicians will be needed in the medical office building by 2010 to stay in step with population growth.

“Challenges like this are standard operating procedure in the health care industry. We expected it. However, the medical office building is a separate project and is not contingent on hospital approval. It will happen regardless of what happens with the hospital,” said Caputo, indicating ORMC is working closely with Avatar and expects the facility to be “approximately one to two years away.”

ORMC’s parent company is Nashville, Tennessee-based HCA, the nation’s leading provider of healthcare services, composed of locally managed facilities that include 182 hospitals and 84 outpatient surgery centers in 22 states. HCA and its affiliates employ approximately 190,000 people.

Avatar Properties Inc. is the developer and primary homebuilder in Poinciana which has been ranked the second Best Selling Master-Planned Community in the United States the past two years. Poinciana also has the distinction of being named one of America’s 100 Nicest Places to Live by Relocate.America.com following a 5-year study over 5,100 communities throughout the United States.

For more information about Avatar and Poinciana, contact Tony Iorio, vice president of land development and Poinciana project manager, at (407) 933-5000.

For more information about Osceola Regional Medical Center, contact Linda Gutermuth, director of business development, at (407) 518-3605.

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