- November 1, 2024
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A new 40,000-square-foot hospital is set to join the city of Ocoee next month.
The new Everest Rehabilitation Hospital sits on 5.1 acres at 1842 E. Silver Star Road, Ocoee. The $24 million project will be the organization’s eighth hospital built out of 17 currently planned projects.
Jay Quintana, one of the company’s three co-founders — in addition to Marc Sparks and Omar Jenkins — and CEO of the company, said the organization completed bed and geographic studies of the area and determined there was a huge population that was being underserved, because previous hospital operators had stuck to the center of the city.
“The hospital is an inpatient rehabilitation hospital that is unlike a skilled-nursing facility, where we provide intensive rehab therapy to help patients return home,” he said. “Our hospital is designed with the patient in mind to eliminate the stigma of being in a hospital or nursing home environment. The complete team of rehabilitation professionals, including the Everest physiatrist (rehabilitation physician), work hand-in-hand with the patient and family to achieve the goals identified at admission and in each step of the rehabilitation process. We achieve this by identifying patients’ wants and needs and by reviewing goals every day to ensure that we remove obstacles and progress towards restoring function. At Everest, we strive to provide all the necessary steps that enable a patient to reclaim their daily life, recover function and return to an optimal quality of life. … Our goal is to keep patients as close to home as possible. The average age of our patients is 72 years old, and we want to be able to provide these services with families visiting and participating in the therapy.”
PERSONALIZED PATIENT CARE
The first Everest Rehabilitation Hospital is located in Longview, Texas, about two hours east of Dallas.
The new Ocoee location is one of five under construction in Florida, which also include hospitals in Ocala and Kissimmee.
Construction commenced on the Ocoee location 18 months ago.
The new rehabilitation hospital will open with 36 beds, with the possibility of adding 17 more in a future expansion.
Parking is being provided to meet two spaces per bed, with a required 72 parking spaces. The site is able to facilitate 100 parking spaces, with 12 being ADA compliant.
Access to the site is through a right-in, right-out on Silver Star Road. An additional driveway is located on Lake Johio Road. A deceleration right-turn lane will be provided on Silver Star Road, with a right-turn lane on Lake Johio Road.
The building will feature two drop-off areas, with a back-of-house for the dumpster and loading zone. The development will provide a 6-foot wall on the north side of the property.
Each Everest Rehabilitation Hospital is equipped with state-of-the-art facilities; luxury, private patient suites; transportation services; and top-of-the-line technology.
Every Everest Rehabilitation Hospital recovery includes three hours of one-to-one therapy, five to seven days a week; daily medical visits by the hospital’s on-site rehabilitation physicians; and 24/7 rehabilitation nursing care for every patient.
Quintana said a high-quality physical rehabilitation program can restore function and help a patient achieve optimal health after a stroke, traumatic injury or debilitating disease, and it is important to understand the key average differences in recovering at an inpatient rehabilitation hospital versus a skilled-nursing facility.
According to statistics based on inpatient physical-rehabilitation hospital and skilled-nursing facility averages, while patients usually stay in skilled nursing facilities for about 34 days, patients in inpatient physical rehabilitation hospitals usually only stay for about 13 days.
In addition, 81% of patients in inpatient physical rehabilitation hospitals are discharged to their home or community, as compared to 27.8% of patients in skilled nursing facilities. Hospital readmission rates in skilled nursing facilities are 19%, while rates in inpatient physical rehabilitation hospitals are 9.4%.
The hospital is starting with 57 employees. Leaders expect that number to grow to about 120 to 140 people when fully licensed and expanded.
The hospital is projecting to have its first employees begin training Oct. 15. Training is expected to take 30 days, and the first patients will be seen soon after.