Construction: Ground broken for new VA medical center in Orlando

A groundbreaking ceremony was held for the new $656 million Orlando (Fla.) VA Medical Center at Lake Nona on Oct. 24. Construction is scheduled to be completed in 2012. Plans call for the facility to have room for 134 inpatient beds, a 120-bed “community living center” and a 60-bed residential rehabilitation program, as well as radiation oncology facilities, eight operating rooms, two cardiac catheterization laboratories, plus MRI and CT equipment. The facilities will sit on a 65-acre site across the street from the University of Central Florida’s new College of Medicine campus. These institutions will combine with the adjacent Burnham Institute for Medical Research and the Nemours Orlando Children’s Hospital to create a 7,000-acre “medical city,” according to a news release. The medical school is expected to open in fall 2009.

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