- Orlando Health’s Rockledge Hospital is closing on April 22, due to poor physical condition, leaving a gap in health care access for Central Brevard residents.
- Health First, Brevard County’s largest health care provider, is taking steps to fill the void, including building two free-standing emergency departments and expanding bed capacity at its hospitals.
- Community partners are collaborating to find solutions, including exploring options for urgent-care centers to handle less severe cases.
Brevard County health care providers are hoping to fill the gap created by the impending closing of Orlando Health’s Rockledge Hospital on April 22. But it could take some time to put the measures in place.
Orlando Health bought the 298-bed Rockledge Hospital in October as part of Steward Health Care’s bankruptcy proceedings. But, on Feb. 20, Orlando Health announced it was closing the hospital, citing the hospital’s poor physical condition that the company said made it unsafe for patients and staff.
Health First — Brevard County’s largest health care provider — is moving forward with recently announced plans to construct and open two free-standing emergency departments in Brevard County by 2027.
“As our community continues to grow, the need for accessible, high-quality emergency care has never been more critical,” said Lance Skelly, Health First’s system director for public and media relations. “These new facilities will help ensure that residents have convenient access to the care they need, close to home.”
Health First has not yet announced the locations of these emergency departments.
Rockledge Mayor Tom Price said he believes one is likely to be located on property Health First owns, near the company’s Health First Business Center in Rockledge. That’s about 3.5 miles away from the closing hospital.
Such a free-standing emergency department would help fill the void created by the closing of Rockledge Hospital’s emergency department, which handled 8,432 patients brought in by Brevard County Fire Rescue ambulances last year — an average of about one an hour. That figure does not count patients who arrive by personal vehicle or by foot to the Rockledge Hospital emergency department.
Beginning at 7 a.m. April 7, the Rockledge Hospital emergency department no longer will accept transports from emergency medical services crews, such as from Brevard County Fire Rescue. Patients who walk in or drive themselves to the Rockledge emergency department from April 7 to the hospital’s official closing on April 22 “will be stabilized, and transferred” to another hospital, Orlando Health said.
Free-standing emergency department trend
Health First’s free-standing emergency departments would be the first such facilities in Brevard County, although they are common elsewhere in Central Florida.
For example, Altamonte Springs-based AdventHealth — which owns a 27% stake in Health First — operates nine off-site emergency departments, with five more under construction, according to Jeff Grainger, director of external communications for AdventHealth’s Central Florida Division.
Health First also is looking into expanding the patient bed capacity of at least some of its four hospitals to handle the gap left by the closing of the 298-bed Rockledge Hospital, which is the second-largest in Brevard County.
Health First operates the 550-bed Holmes Regional Medical Center in Melbourne; the 150-bed Cape Canaveral Hospital in Cocoa Beach; the 120-bed Palm Bay Hospital; and the 98-bed Viera Hospital, which recently expanded by 14 beds with the move of a labor and delivery unit there from Cape Canaveral Hospital.
The other general hospitals in Brevard are the 119-bed Orlando Health Melbourne Hospital and Parrish Healthcare‘s 210-bed Parrish Medical Center in Titusville.
The main geographic areas that Rockledge Hospital draws patients from include Rockledge, Cocoa, Merritt Island, Port St. John, Canaveral Groves and other unincorporated areas north of Cocoa. After the hospital closes, many of those patients likely would go to Cape Canaveral Hospital, Parrish Medical Center or Viera Hospital.
The hospital’s closing would result in increased travel times for ambulance crews who otherwise would be transporting patients to Rockledge Hospital.
That creates additional risk that some patients might not survive, especially in cases of a heart attack, stroke or major injury from a motor vehicle accident. It also puts ambulance crews out of service for longer periods time, as they wait at busy hospital emergency departments for their patients to be seen by hospital medical staff.
Health provider ‘working group’ seeks solutions
Space Coast Health Foundation President and CEO Johnette Gindling said, when Orlando Health announced in February its plans to close Rockledge Hospital, the foundation established a working group of community partners to discuss immediate and long-term solutions for health care access to Central Brevard residents’ impacted by the hospital’s closure.
Those community partners include the Brevard Health Alliance, Health First, Orlando Health, Parrish, MedFast Urgent Care Centers, the Space Coast Health Centers, the Florida Department of Health-Brevard, Brevard County Fire Rescue and Coastal Health Systems of Brevard. Also collaborating in these talks are leaders from Rockledge and Cocoa, Brevard County Commissioner Katie Delaney, Florida House Majority Leader Tyler Sirois and Florida Rep. Debbie Mayfield.
“Our meetings have been productive, and we’re confident we will be offering solutions to the void left by the Rockledge Hospital’s closing,” Gindling said.
Concerns from Parrish CEO
Parrish President/CEO George Mikitarian told county commisioners earlier this month that “we can only accommodate so many additional patients with the resources that we have.” He said, when Rockledge Hospital closes, Parrish will “bear the brunt of serving the lower-income members” of Central Brevard area who do not have health insurance.
Mikitarian said potential expansion of staff and space that Parrish would need could cost $5 million to $15 million a year.
Mikitarian said he would like to see financial support from Orlando Health and the Space Coast Health Foundation, “should the burden for solutions be placed upon the existing service organizations and government entities.”
He said funding could be allocated based on such things as increased patient volumes, as well the portion of medical bills not paid by the patient, private insurance or government entities.
Mikitarian said he also would also want Orlando Health and the Space Coast Health Foundation to help fund any needed enhancements to the 911 system “for the rapid response and/or transport of patients, when required.”
Mikitarian said extensive work needs to be done to ensure Central Brevard “continues to receive the health care it so needs.”
Gindling said the Space Coast Health Foundation “is committed to doing everything we can to assist with health care access in Central Brevard,” noting that the foundation has provided more than $20 million in health-related grants to community organizations throughout Brevard community in the last 10 years.
Other solutions sought
In addition, Brevard County Fire Rescue is working with local urgent-care offices to determine plans for those facilities to accept more patients with relatively minor injuries or ailments who otherwise might have been transported to a hospital emergency department.
Heath First also has expanded its First Flight air ambulance program, with a second full-time helicopter about to come online. The new helicopter and crew will be stationed in the northern tier of Brevard County, while the original aircraft and crew will remain in Melbourne, covering the southern tier of Brevard and parts of Indian River County.
More long-term, Skelly said, Health First is ahead of schedule with construction of its new Cape Canaveral Hospital and Medical Office Building on Merritt Island, with a targeted open date of early 2027. The land is cleared, the foundation has been laid, and walls are being erected for the new hospital.
The new hospital will be closer to the Rockledge/Cocoa area than the Cocoa Beach hospital, which will close after the Merritt Island hospital opens.
Keila Stradtner, system vice president of facilities, real estate and construction at Health First, on Friday said Health First is doing all it can to open the new hospital on Merritt Island as soon as possible. Although the current target is early-2027, there is a chance it could be a little sooner “with any luck and weather cooperating,” she said.
The five-story hospital will have 120 inpatient beds, 24 emergency room beds and six operating rooms. The complex will include a three-story medical office building and a four-story parking garage. The new hospital location will be more insulated from potential impacts of hurricanes and tropical storms, including storm surge, than the Cocoa Beach site is.
Skelly said Health First is “examining all options to minimize impacts to our patients and community” from the Rockledge Hospital closing, Skelly said.
Orlando Health said it plans to build a new hospital in Brevard County, but has not disclosed the location or the timetable for its opening.
Doctors at rally fear more deaths after closing
More than 2,000 people have signed an online petition on Change.org, asking Orlando Health to halt its plans to close Rockledge Hospital.
On Friday, about 40 staff members of Rockledge Hospital and their supporters protested the closing at an afternoon rally held on a sidewalk across U.S. 1 from the hospital. They carried signs that said such things as “close a hospital in two months — that’s criminal” and “people before profits,” and chanted: “Hey, hey. Ho, ho. Where are our patients going to go?”
Watching from the Rockledge Hospital parking lot across the street were Orlando Health security staff in marked vehicles with flashing lights.
The grass-roots “Help Save Orlando Rockledge Hospital” rally on Friday afternoon was hosted by the Space Coast Progressive Alliance, Awake Brevard Action Alliance and Yantz Family Advocates for Brevard.
Among the speakers at the rally was Dr. Jorge Leal, a urologist at the hospital, who contends that there is no reason to close Rockledge Hospital, since it is profitable and can be renovated.
Closing the hospital “is going to be a killer — literally,” Leal said, because longer ambulance trips from Central Brevard to another hospital will mean more patients with a serious injury or a critical medical condition like a heart attack or stroke will die.
Dr. Saima Abbas, an infectious disease physician at the hospital, called Orlando Health’s decision to close Rockledge Hosptal just months after buying it “truly unforgivable.”
Patients “are going to lose their lives in the ambulance” on the ride to another hospital when Rockledge Hospital’s emergency department is no longer open, Abbas said.
Dave Berman is business editor at FLORIDA TODAY. Contact Berman at dberman@floridatoday.com, on X at @bydaveberman and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/dave.berman.54
