Health First has updated when it will build the first of its Wellness Village concepts in Brevard County.
The Rockledge-based nonprofit health system has new timelines for its planned construction in Melbourne at 611 E. Sheridan Road and Merritt Island at 255 Borman Drive, per a new website for the project.
Health First originally announced the concept in 2019 as three Wellness Village locations, with a third set for Palm Bay near the intersection of Malabar and Minton Roads.
At the time, the projects — the trio of which was set to represent over $600 million in investment — were set to begin construction in 2020 for Melbourne and Merritt Island, with Palm Bay to begin in 2021, but those timelines were delayed by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Now, Merritt Island will break ground in 2023 with a goal of finishing in 2025, while Melbourne will start construction in 2023 and finish in 2024. No new details have been released on the Palm Bay location or its status.
The Merritt Island site will be on 14 acres and include a new hospital with 120 beds, a medical office building, retail space, imaging and diagnostic services, walking trails and a childcare facility. The system will move Cape Canaveral Hospital to the site, which features over 150 beds and 240 medical staff.
In Melbourne, the Wellness Village will be built on 22 acres next to Holmes Regional Medical Center. Besides walking paths, a childcare facility and retail space, the Melbourne location also will feature a medical office building and an outpatient surgical center.
Steve Johnson, president and CEO of Health First, said in a March 14 email to the system’s staff that the decrease in Covid-19 cases locally and nationally prompted the focus on the concepts again.
“These cutting-edge villages will provide modern acute care, complemented by retail and wellness-focused services,” Johnson said in the email. “Health First’s Wellness Villages will be destination centers for consumers that embody the transition from an era almost exclusively focused on sick care to an era of wellness.”
More details on the Wellness Villages will be released at a later date, Health First spokesman Lance Skelly told Orlando Business Journal.
Health First has roughly 9,000 staff members and operates four hospitals in Brevard County. It is an integrated delivery network that offers its own health insurance plans through Health First Health Plans and has a medical group with multiple physician specialities.
It has over $1.9 billion in operating revenue for fiscal 2021, according to credit rating agency Moody’s. Altamonte Springs nonprofit health system AdventHealth has a roughly 27% stake in Health First.
Meanwhile, many hospital systems in the state are pursuing growth to expand their geographic reach, patient count and topline revenue, said Allan Baumgarten, an independent health analyst, in his Florida Health Market Review 2021. That includes either the acquisition or construction of outpatient offices, freestanding emergency departments or hospitals. “Now that the state has repealed most of its certificate of need rules, other systems, including academic medical centers and hospital districts, are breaking ground on new projects.”
For example, AdventHealth has several projects in the works:
Meanwhile, Orlando Health also has projects in the pipeline:
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