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Nobody plans a visit to the Emergency Department.

At Florida Hospital Celebration Health in Osceola County, they know that if a trip to the ED is necessary, you’ll need to stay in touch more than ever.

The hospital has added free internet access, computers and printers to the waiting area of its newly expanded ED so that patients and their families can use the onsite business center to send or receive emails, alter scheduled flights, print directions or research a diagnosis.

Mike Thompson, assistant administrator of Florida Hospital said, “We have a number of patients from out of town, and this will help them make travel arrangements and communicate with home.”

The recent expansion of the area also included six new ED beds and the addition of a 20-bed Rapid-In-and-Out (RIO) unit.

The RIO is a comfortable area where patients can stay while undergoing short procedures, such as antibiotic therapies or outpatient blood transfusions. It also serves as an area where patients from the ED can be cared for in an inpatient bed when the hospital is 100 percent occupied.

The expansion allowed the hospital to add a separate pediatric outpatient play area to help parents and children pass the time while waiting. Thompson said “25 percent of our visitors are pediatric.” He pointed out that the hospital is only five miles from the Disney properties.

It isn’t just out-of-towners that need the facilities of Celebration Health-- the hospital’s location in Osceola County, which is the seventh fastest growing county in the United States, makes it the closest hospital to an ever increasing number of its neighbors.

Florida Hospital Celebration Health continues to grow with the community. The ED has seen record numbers of patients on a daily basis and is projected to see more than 50,000 patients this year. Thompson commented that the number of patients is already up about 10 percent since the ED was expanded.

When the Disney Corporation decided to construct Celebration, a “new town” prototype located near its Disney World complex, it sought proposals for the construction and management of a hospital as part of the community. Florida Hospital, a system of seven Central Florida hospitals operated by the Adventist Church, was selected to serve this need in the community.

From the earliest stages of planning, the new hospital was envisioned as a state-of-the-art physical environment that would promote healing. Cutting-edge architectural components were incorporated into the design including extensive use of natural light and gardens, family-centered patient rooms, and imaginative artwork.

The goal from the beginning was to create a “living laboratory” that provides inventive, groundbreaking healthcare solutions through clinical innovation, educational partnerships, research and publishing, all combined with technological breakthroughs.

A number of internationally known physicians practice at Celebration Health and their patients come to the hospital from around the country and the world. The hospital sees 35 to 40 surgical cases a day in every specialty except open heart surgery.

Thompson said the ED expansion was an extension of the hospital’s philosophy of “building a community of tomorrow that is a real community today focused on the latest in healthcare technology.”


August 2007

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