When the new Florida Hospital Apopka campus opens late this year, there will be many more hospital beds available for patients and several more services to those who need them.
Hospital staff will go from working in a one-story 50-bed hospital to a seven-story 200-bed hospital in addition to a much larger emergency department and intensive care unit.
Making sure the current staff – and those being hired to work at the new campus – are ready to go on day one has become job one for Apopka hospital administrator Tim Cook and the rest of the management team at Florida Hospital Apopka.
“What has probably become more and more apparent is that the biggest piece of this transition isn’t building the building,” Cook said. “While the building is beautiful and we’ve got great people building it and it’s going very, very well as everything is on schedule, the biggest thing we’re having to deal with is the change of going from a scope that’s very, very small to a scope that’s very, very big and how do you prepare the staff? That’s our big and exciting process.”
Cook said management has been working with staff to assess exactly what training will be needed before the move.
“The other thing we’re doing is a lot of focus groups with our team members through small groups of our current team to talk about what the transition means,” Cook said.
“What additional trainings do we need to have? What kinds of trainings are coming so that they aren’t caught off guard and that they understand? Some of those trainings we can’t do here by the very nature of the hospital and its scope of services because we can’t simulate many of the things here that we’re going to do in the new hospital.”
Although there are lots of variables possible in the timing, Cook said the training is focused on early December as the target date for the opening of the new $200-million campus that is located at the intersection of Ocoee-Apopka Road and Harmon Road on the southwest side of Apopka. The new campus sits next to the interchange of State Road 429 and State Road 451, very near where State Road 414 joins in a confluence of the three toll roads.
“We’ll be doing more and more training at the end of the summer and into fall at the hospital,” Cook said. “We hope in November to be in full transition mode and move patients in the first week of December. We hope to see the first patient there. That’s the target.”
An extended version of this story can be found on page 1A of the Apopka Chief’s Friday, June 9, issue.
