Florida's Broward Health is bucking a trend by investing in inpatient rather than outpatient facilities. The Fort Lauderdale-based system plans to add 54 inpatient beds to its Coral Springs hospital. Population growth in that market, especially among the elderly, justifies the expansion, hospital officials said.
The four-hospital system's board has approved a $56 million plan to expand Broward Health Coral Springs, increasing the hospital's licensed beds from a current count of 196 to 250 beds. The proposed renovation would include more surgical beds, private post-partum rooms in the hospital's maternity wing with a relocated neonatal intensive care unit placed closer to that wing, as well as improvements to the campus's central energy plant.
Broward Health expects to break ground on the project in June or July 2016, and to complete the project by mid-2018.
The multi-million dollar inpatient expansion comes at a time when many health systems are building new ambulatory facilities and some are even shuttering inpatient buildings.
Just last week, Cleveland Clinic announced it would turn its Lakewood (Ohio) Hospital into an outpatient facility and emergency department, while Boston-based Steward Health System has faced concern over its plans to replace Quincy (Mass.) Medical Center with a 24-hour ED and an urgent care clinic, in two separate locations.
But for Broward Health Coral Springs, an inpatient expansion makes more sense, and has been a “long time coming,” said CEO Drew Grossman.
The hospital expects its service area to increase by 37% by 2040, while admission rates are expected to increase by 42%, according to a release. The part of the county the hospital serves is expected to grow nearly five times faster than the rest of the county, so the hospital needs to maintain enough surgical beds to stay competitive, Grossman said.
The reason for the expansion “is really for us to have an upgraded facility and more rooms for all the communities we serve,” Grossman said. “It's going to have us in a unique position, not just as BH Coral Springs but as a system.”
Broward Health projects the expansion will bring a 6% return on investment through 2030, which means the hospital would recover the money spent on construction and upgrades in 12 years, according to a release. The hospital is currently accepting bids from architecture and construction companies.
Unlike many hospitals, Coral Springs has seen its inpatient admissions rise over the past few years, and thinks its growing elderly population will require care that can't always be performed in an outpatient setting, Grossman said.
Inpatient care will remain an important component of American healthcare, Grossman predicted, regardless of how care delivery may change in the coming years—and especially as people live longer.
“I think at the end of the day you're still going to have hospitals in this country,” Grossman said. “Not everything is going to be on an outpatient basis.”
Follow Adam Rubenfire on Twitter: @arubenfire
