Palm Coast, FL – Flagler County’s main hospital is about to grow.
Florida Hospital plans to add space for 32 more patients on the 2nd and 3rd floor of its Palm Coast location as part of a $15 million construction project.
Florida Hospital spokeswoman Lindsay Rew says its Flagler branch needs more space now that the county population is over the 100,000 mark.
“The beds will be designed as Progressive Care Unit rooms,” Rew added. “In a PCU, patients are less critical than ICU patients, but they require more care than provided on the regular nursing floors.”
The PCU beds will be placed right above the ICU location on the first floor.
Florida Hospital also plans to license an additional 16 observation beds that have already been built, giving the Flagler branch a total of 147 licensed beds once the construction is finished. The hospital currently has 99 licensed beds.
Construction will start in spring of 2016 and finish at some point near the end of that year, per Rew.
The United States Census Bureau reported that Flagler’s population officially went into six figures last March.
Florida Hospital Flagler’s average daily census has increased more than 25% from 2010 to 2014, according to Rew.
It isn’t clear at this point how many employees Florida Hospital plans to hire at its Flagler location once the beds are built. The hospital currently has has 924 employees.
Renderings below are courtesy of Florida Hospital.
Copyright 2015 Southern Stone Communications.