Andrea Hardeman Brown remembers being 18 years old and getting her first hospital job at Rockledge Hospital.
"It was large enough to be efficient for high-acuity patients, but it was small enough to still have the feel of a community hospital where everybody knew your name," Brown said.
Brown, 43, now works as a clinical liaison for Kindred Hospital in Melbourne, though until recently her work brought her into Rockledge Hospital.
That’s because Orlando Health, citing poor conditions and neglect, shuttered the hospital, which it bought during Steward Health Care’s drawn-out bankruptcy last year.
"Effective at 12:01 am, April 23, 2025, Rockledge Hospital and its Emergency Room were closed," Orlando Health posted on its website.
Brown says the loss of the hospital leaves a void sure to be felt throughout all of Brevard for the foreseeable future.
"I want to make mention of the absolute devastation that the closing of the hospital is going to cause the community of Rockledge, Cocoa, and Port St. John," Brown said. "If you have a heart attack, seconds count, minutes count. We're not going to be able to get an ambulance out there (quickly.)"
It's a sentiment echoed by Jim Wilson, deputy fire chief for the Rockledge Fire Department.
"I've been working since 1982, and this is the single biggest challenge that I've faced," Wilson said. "There's no training manual on how to adapt and overcome when you lose your local receiving facility."
His agency and the Brevard County Fire Rescue have been training together using systems to exchange patient information quickly when Rockledge personnel are first on a scene and Brevard’s arrives for emergency transport. It's all been prep for Rockledge's anticipated closure.
Closing Rockledge
Orlando Health purchased Rockledge Hospital – as well as the hospitals formerly known as Sebastian River Medical Center and Melbourne Regional Medical Center – for $439 million last October in Steward’s Chapter 11 filing.
"Prior to acquiring Rockledge Hospital, (Orlando Health) was aware that years of neglect had left the facility in such poor condition that it did not meet the system's standards for patient care environments," said Orlando Health wrote on its webpage.
The hospital chain said it purchased the hospital to avoid the facility's immediate closure following Steward's bankruptcy.
"Following in-depth inspections that could only occur after acquisition, it was determined that the cost to repair and renovate Rockledge Hospital far exceeds the cost of a new, state-of-the-art hospital," Orlando Health said.
According to a 2024 assessment by the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration, Rockledge "failed to ensure ongoing preventive maintenance to ensure patient care equipment remained in safe operating conditions." The report also notes that multiple rooms were closed due to maintenance concerns and that the bathrooms and air-conditioning units were not working.
Last week, Orlando Health released images from inside the hospital depicting black mold covering basement walls, structural issues and corroded sanitation lines. None of the photos released showed patient rooms or staff working stations.
Still, the news to close the 84-year-old hospital was not received well by local leaders.
"It's a betrayal to the community," said Rockledge Mayor Thomas Price. "It was very crucial when 60,000 to 70,000 people were depending on that facility for their hospital and their emergency room."
Rockledge is a town of 30,000, but its emergency department was also used by neighboring Cocoa Beach, Price said. He added that following Steward's mistreatment of the property, the community was overjoyed when Orlando Health announced it was buying Rockledge.
"We were very excited about Orlando Health and, because of their reputation and their presence in Central Florida, already in the Orlando area, and we thought it was going to be a really great thing for our city," Price said.
Price said he learned of the closure an hour before the news was made public.
"We had no idea," the Mayor said.
According to Price, the city asked Orlando Health to consider staying open until a facility could be built nearby to absorb patients. He said the case he made was simple.
"You guys want to close it, but let's put this thing out a year to two years down the road, so we can be ready for what else we're going to do. We got to have a plan, guys, and we've got to have an emergency room."
Orlando Health stated in a press release that the construction of another facility could take years, "which is longer than our experts feel Rockledge Hospital can realistically remain open."
Following the news of the closure, Orlando Health stated there were plans over the next four years to spend more than $750 million to build a hospital, freestanding emergency departments (north, central and south Brevard) and physician offices. Orlando Health has yet to say where in Brevard the new hospital would go.
For now, the community faces more immediate problems, such as longer ambulance rides to the closest neighboring hospital.
Challenges in Rockledge's wake
Emergency medical technicians were able to transport patients via ambulance from any point in Rockledge to the hospital in about eight minutes, Wilson said. The national standard is about nine minutes.
Now, the closest Brevard hospitals are in Cape Canaveral and Melbourne, between 10 and 20 miles away. Wilson says transport times will double or even triple.
"Is it ideal that instead of a patient going five minutes to an emergency room, they now go 20 minutes? No, that's not ideal," Wilson said.
While longer transport times are concerning, Wilson is also thinking about "wall time," or the time an emergency room staff needs to take the patient and allow the ambulance back into service.
"That's one factor we cannot control," he said. "It's going to end up trickling down into potential delays in response times to scenes."
Wilson said Brevard County Fire Rescue began bolstering its ambulance fleet this month by partnering with Coastal Ambulance System to provide nonlife-threatening patient transportation to area hospitals. Coastal is a private, nonprofit ambulance provider.
But the worries don't end with fear over longer transport and response times, said Lee Revere, a professor of public health at the University of Florida.
"It also basically drives physicians out of the community that may have practiced at that hospital, then you kind of have a tripling effect."
Revere said the loss of a central hub for primary care physicians and specialists would mean people have less access to preventative care, and that it will likely exacerbate illnesses.
"Heart disease or diabetes patients, they need to see these specialists or at least primary care routinely," Revere said.
According to the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, there were 283 primary care physicians and specialty doctors associated with Rockledge.
Traveling further, even if it's 30 minutes or 40 minutes, could lead to fewer routine appointments, Revere said.
"That has a domino effect, where now you're more chronic, you're more severe, you're in more need of emergency medical services," she said. "It's not good for the individual, and it's expensive treatment as people get more severe and aren't preventing some of these more acute illnesses from getting really high-level."
And then there are the surrounding hospitals that are forced to pick up the slack in Rockledge's absence.
According to the city, Rockledge Hospital received 8,000 patients via ambulance transport a year.
Brown added that Rockledge had one of the large intensive care units the region with 24 beds. As a clinical liaison, she works with multiple hospital ICUs in the Brevard area.
"(Rockledge) was the largest ICU that I handled. I handle Cape Canaveral Hospital, which has 11 beds, Parish Medical Center, which has 12 beds. I cover the Viera Hospital that has 20 beds," she said. "We are losing 24 intensive care unit beds. That is insane. Where are those patients going to go?"
First Health Network, which operates several hospitals out of Brevard, said it is prepared to step up while there is a void in Rockledge. The network also announced plans to accelerate construction of a freestanding emergency department about eight minutes south of Rockledge Hospital.
"We've been planning to grow our emergency care network, and the timing could not be more critical for us to accelerate our plans. Our neighbors can count on us to step up and deliver the right care, in the right place, at the right time," Health First president and CEO Terry Forde said in a press release.
First Health did not give a date for the project's completion.
For now, Wilson is keeping his fire rescue team focused on saving lives. What has him uneasy, however, is hurricane season.
"There have been times at Cape Canaveral hospital when we had a Category 1 or a Category 2 (hurricane) off the coast and possibly coming into Brevard. It's a low-lying area, and that hospital had to be evacuated. And they were always evacuated to the Rockledge Hospital," he said. "By any measure, we're trying to adapt and to overcome in this enormously challenging time."
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