It’s not even three years old, and the Florida Hospital Wesley Chapel is already planning a significant expansion that will increase the number of patient rooms, operating rooms and emergency rooms.
Hospital officials announced the expansion in a news release on March 6.
The $78 million project, expected to begin construction this year, is responding to a demonstrated need.
(Courtesy of Florida Hospital Wesley Chapel)
“Florida Hospital Wesley Chapel was originally designed with the ability to grow with the needs of the community,” Dr. Robert Rosequist, chief medical officer of the hospital, said in a release.
“Since opening less than three years ago, the hospital has experienced extremely high volumes of patients seeking care,” he added.
The 200,000-square-foot hospital opened on Oct. 1, 2012.
At that time, it had 83 patient rooms, 18 emergency rooms, a catheterization lab and five operating rooms. It cost $161 million to acquire the land, and build the hospital and adjacent medical office building, according to hospital officials.
Denyse Bales-Chubb, president and CEO of the hospital, said “the community has overwhelmingly shown us both the need for the hospital, and their confidence and appreciation for the high quality care our staff delivers every day.”
“We are so blessed by their faith in us,” she said. The hospital knows it needs to grow “to meet both the current demands and future growth of the community,” Bales-Chubb added, in a release.
The expansion calls for three additional floors to the hospital’s center wing and an additional three-story wing that will connect the south and center wings.
Altogether, it involves 111,993 square feet of new construction and 10,834 square feet of renovation.
The expansion includes added additional emergency rooms, inpatient rooms, surgical suites and related surgical services, Heart Catheterization Lab, and recovery/observation rooms as well as shelled space for future growth.
Construction is expected to begin this summer, with the expansion opening at the end of 2016. A groundbreaking ceremony is scheduled for Aug. 5 at 10 a.m.
Maintaining the care and comfort of its patients during the construction is the hospital’s top priority, Tracy Clouser, marketing director said, via email.
It expects to be able to do that because the hospital was built with expansion in mind, Clouser said, noting the patient care areas have a sound muffling system to help reduce disturbance from noise, and there are no air handlers on the roof, to make expansion easier and less intrusive.
Since opening, the hospital has continued to add new programs and services, Clouser added.
“The addition will allow us more opportunities to do that. One example of this is in surgery. With additional operating rooms, we will be able to add additional physicians and expand the types of surgery we can perform,” she said.
Additionally, “the renovation will include moving the caesarean section operating room to the third floor, expanding areas like pre-admission testing, waiting rooms and sterile supply. It will also include an expansion of our central energy plant to support the larger facility,” Clouser said.
Services at the hospital include an emergency department, cardiac care, vascular surgery, orthopedics and sports medicine, women’s services and gynecology, obstetrics, urology and nephrology, outpatient imaging, outpatient physical and occupational therapy, The Center for Women’s Health and a freestanding Health & Wellness Center.
The hospital’s Wellness Plaza also houses offices for primary care and specialty physicians.
Florida Hospital Wesley Chapel is part of the Adventist Health System, a leading nonprofit health network that has 23 hospitals throughout the state.
For more information, visit FHWesleyChapel.org.
