ORLANDO, Fla. (April 26, 2012) --- Today, Orlando Regional Medical Center team members were joined by community leaders and government officials for a groundbreaking ceremony for the hospital’s Redesign and Renovation Project.
The Redesign and Renovation Project, ORMC’s latest community investment, includes constructing a new patient bed tower and increasing the size of the Emergency Department. Additional project plans include increasing the size of and renovating existing cardiovascular, surgical, critical care, pharmacy and laboratory areas.
“Not only are we breaking ground on the Redesign and Renovation Project, we are breaking ground on a new model of care,” said Sherrie Sitarik, president/CEO, Orlando Health. “Beyond the physical construction aspects, the ORMC Redesign and Renovation Project is a part of this transition and is key to changing the way we care for patients.”
The “bricks and mortar” phase of the Redesign and Renovation Project allows the hospital to consolidate services and bring together the people, places, technology and other components necessary to foster the environment needed to truly put patients first.
For example, as part of the new approach to patient care the hospital is bringing together doctors, surgeons and clinical staff to provide advanced diagnostic services, the latest surgical and non-surgical treatment options, comprehensive education and innovative research in a more streamlined and efficient way.
The Redesign and Renovation Project creates a more centralized downtown campus to foster the new patient experience, including greater accessibility to clinical experts, more coordinated and collaborated care, advanced diagnostics and more timely results.
A component of the Redesign and Renovation Project is closing the Lucerne Pavilion and transferring inpatient care to ORMC. This consolidation will result in better service for patients and greatly improve efficiency and cost savings for the organization. The Annex area of the Lucerne Pavilion will remain open. The Annex area includes inpatient rehabilitation services.
The 190+ bed, 10-story tall tower will be 345,000 square feet in size. The Redesign and Renovation Project, at an estimated cost of $297 million, represents one of the largest and most significant projects in the organization’s history.
“The tower itself is not an expansion, rather a consolidation of our inpatient beds,” said Shannon Elswick, president, Adult Hospitals Group. “The consolidation will greatly improve efficiency and cost savings for the organization. The efficiencies and cost savings from no longer operating two facilities represent millions of dollars of potential savings per year. For example, the cost of transporting patients between ORMC and the Lucerne Pavilion is about $2 million per year; eliminating the need is a financial savings to the hospital and an invaluable service enhancement to patients.”
The ORMC Redesign and Renovation Project is one of several recent Orlando Health downtown campus patient care enhancements including the Orlando Health Heart Institute which opened November 2011, a new replacement parking garage that opened December 2010, and a new MD Anderson Cancer Center Orlando Breast Cancer Survivorship Clinic that opened in March 2009.
About Orlando Health
Orlando Health is a $1.9 billion not-for-profit health care organization and a community-based network of hospitals and care centers in the Orlando region. The organization, which includes the area’s only Level One Trauma Centers for adults and pediatrics, is a statutory teaching hospital system that offers both specialty and community hospitals. They are: Orlando Regional Medical Center; Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children; Winnie Palmer Hospital for Women & Babies; Dr. P. Phillips Hospital; South Seminole Hospital; Health Central, South Lake Hospital (50 percent affiliation); St. Cloud Regional Medical Center (20 percent affiliation) and MD Anderson Cancer Center Orlando – the first affiliate of one of the nation’s premier cancer centers, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. Orlando Health’s areas of clinical excellence are heart and vascular, cancer care, neurosciences, surgery, pediatric orthopedics and sports medicine, neonatology, and obstetrics and gynecology.
Orlando Health is one of Central Florida’s largest employers with nearly 16,000 employees and more than 2,500 affiliated physicians supporting our philosophy of providing high quality care and service that revolves around patients’ needs. We prove this everyday with over 110,000 inpatient admissions and nearly 690,000 outpatient visits each year. In all, Orlando Health serves 1.6 million Central Florida residents and nearly 3,000 international patients annually. Additionally, Orlando Health provides approximately $239 million in support of community health needs. More information can be found at www.orlandohealth.com.