Encompass Health to build two rehabilitation hospitals on the First Coast (Courtesy of the Jacksonville Business Journal) – One of the nation’s largest integrated health care providers is planning to set up two freestanding rehabilitation hospitals on the First Coast, with facilities slated to be opened in Jacksonville and St. Augustine.
Encompass Health’s most solid plans relate to Jacksonville, with a 50-bed facility expected to be opened in the later half of 2022.
Encompass has 400 locations across the country, including Inpatient and outpatient rehabilitation, hospice care and home health services. The Jacksonville facility would be its 13th inpatient rehabilitation hospital in Florida.
The company also has plans for a 40-bed inpatient rehabilitation hospital in St. Augustine, but a construction timeline for that project has not been established.
Encompass (NYSE: EHC) said it is hiring for both locations, although no specific positions are yet listed on their website.
The company already has land under contract for the Jacksonville location, dubbed the Encompass Health Rehabilitation Hospital of Jacksonville, although the location has not been disclosed.
The hospital will complement local acute care services, caring for patients recovering from debilitating illnesses and injuries. The hospital will provide physical, occupational and speech therapies that aim to restore functional ability and quality of life as well as 24–hour care by registered nurses, many of whom are certified in rehabilitation nursing.
“Encompass Health has provided comprehensive physical rehabilitation to patients in Florida for over three decades in our current network of hospitals throughout the state. We’ve watched the Jacksonville area grow and expand creating the need for additional healthcare services,” said Linda Wilder, president of Encompass Health’s southeast region. “We look forward to building this state–of–the–art hospital, for which the design is based off our experience serving approximately 190,000 rehabilitation patients annually in our 136 hospitals throughout the nation and Puerto Rico.”
The hospital will feature all private patient rooms, a therapy gym, an activities of daily living suite, cafeteria, dining room, pharmacy and therapy courtyard.
The medical staff will have physicians experienced in physical medicine and rehabilitation as well as a range of other specialties allowing the facility to support a “complex patient population.”
Encompass is growing rapidly in Florida, where in addition to the hospitals it has 19 home health locations, including one in Jacksonville. It has hospitals under construction in Tampa and Pensacola and plans for hospitals in Naples, Cape Coral and Lakeland in addition to the First Coast.