HealthSouth Corp.'s Lakeshore Rehabilitation Hospital has filed plans with the State Health Planning and Development Agency for a major expansion project at the 42-year-old hospital.
The total cost of the two-stage expansion project, including first year annual operating costs, is $61.5 million.
According to the Certificate of Need filing, the first part of the project involves constructing a two-story, 20,220-square-foot addition to the existing facility that will include patient rooms, a nursing station, a day room and a lobby area.
HealthSouth (NYSE: HLS) said the second phase involves renovating 60 patient rooms across 51,100 square feet to meet the standards of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Currently, the hospital has 20 private patient rooms and 40 semiprivate rooms, but once the project is finished, which is anticipated for the first quarter of 2019, the hospital will have 64 private rooms and 18 semiprivate rooms.
The project will not add any additional beds to the facility's current count of 100, but will change the distribution of beds from 20 private beds and 80 semiprivate beds to 64 private beds and 36 semiprivate beds.
Along with updating the rooms to comply with the ADA, other reasons listed for the expansion include correcting inefficiencies in the delivery of private care, reducing the denials of admissions due to capacity constraints and repairing the infrastructure of the building.
HealthSouth has been expanding rapidly in recent months with several acquisitions and joint ventures outside the state. In the past, company leaders have said Alabama's Certificate of Need process has made expansion efforts difficult within the state.