ORLANDO, Fla – As Central Florida’s population continues to rise, AdventHealth said it is building for the future to meet the growing healthcare demands of the region.
“Planning for the future of the healthcare of Orlando is the most important thing that me and my team do,” said Brian Adams, CEO of AdventHealth’s Central Florida division. “You never want to be in a situation where a community has outgrown its healthcare.”
AdventHealth’s Central Florida division encompasses 17 hospitals and emergency rooms in four counties (Orange, Osceola, Lake and Seminole) across metro Orlando, but several more facilities are in the pipeline.
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At its core, Adams and his team are in the business of bringing healthcare closer to home using a proactive and careful planning approach.
“To build and plan a hospital from start to finish is more than a five-year, six-year journey,” he explained. “If we’re not thinking of the next five years today, then that hospital or that emergency room or that doctor’s office or that clinical program won’t be ready when a patient needs it.”
AdventHealth’s Lake Nona campus is a prime example of this foresight. Slated to open in late 2026, the 10-story, state-of-the-art facility along Narcoossee Road is being hailed as the “hospital of the future” for its innovative approach to the evolving world of healthcare.
“Another way to think of it might be the hospital of firsts, which then allows us to learn and expand,” Adams said. “This hospital, for instance, will have a center for incisionless surgery where we have surgeons who have been trained in focused ultrasound technology to obliterate tumors that are on someone’s liver without ever opening an incision.”
Adams also emphasized the importance of selecting the right locations for these projects. The upcoming 80-bed hospital in Minneola, scheduled to be ready by early 2026, is a $271 million investment aimed at reducing the need for residents of south Lake County to travel for medical services. Currently, 45% of those residents leave the county for healthcare, according to Adams.
“We look at, ‘What’s the population? Where is it growing? Where are the new roads going to be? And what types of diseases will the population need care for?’” he said. “We’re really fortunate to be able to partner with our counties and cities as they do their master planning.”
AdventHealth is also expanding facilities to address growing needs. The Winter Garden campus, for example, is adding three stories to its patient tower to accommodate the area’s young families. Construction is expected to be finished by the second quarter of 2026.
“If feels like we just finished that hospital,” Adams said. “We’re now building a tower there so we can open OB services for that community because we know the number of young families that want to have their babies close to home is significant.”
AdventHealth is also working to build three additional emergency rooms in metro Orlando:
- Poinciana ER (16 beds) will open Q4 2025
- Sand Lake ER (12 beds) will open Q4 2025
- Sanford ER (12 beds) will open Q3 of 2025
Building hospitals is only part of the equation. Staffing them is equally important. Over the next three years, AdventHealth plans to add 800 providers, including doctors, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants, to improve access to care across the region.
“Each one of our programs is growing,” Adams noted. “All across Central Florida, we’ve invested significant time, resources, but most importantly clinical talent (physicians and caregivers) to help keep Central Florida healthy.”
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