Osceola Regional Hospital adds $60M patient tower

OSCEOLA COUNTY, Fla. — A $60 million expansion to Osceola Regional Hospital could help residents obtain easier access to needed medical care.

The Osceola Regional Hospital campus has grown a lot in two decades.

When the chief medical officer gave birth to her son 22 years ago, she said it was just one floor.

"It was probably about 50 to 80 beds," Aida Sanchez-Jimenez said.

Sanchez-Jimenez is welcoming something else to the world: a patient tower to the hospital that will add more than 60 patient rooms and expand services.

"To see a cardiac tower and now neurosurgery," Sanchez-Jimenez said,"it's a great thing to be a part of something like that."

A new piece of technology is the system is that it lets staff members inside let everybody outside know what's going on, like changing to pink in case a patient is having pain."

$7 million worth of technology is going into the three story patient tower that will house intensive care oncology and spine center patients.

It'll also help relieve the strain they've felt at times in the rest of the hospital now that they'll have more room.

The first floor of the tower is empty but hospital officials have plans to add a pediatric unit within a year to keep trying to meet the needs of Osceola's growing population.

"We owe it to the patients and the community." Sanchez-Jimenez said.

WFTV