Lee Memorial has been waiting for this day for over three months.
And the state said no.
And the reason was, according to a 75-page denial letter, the state says rival NCH is only at 50 percent capacity and there is not a need for more beds in the county.
CEO Jim Nathan tells the Lehigh Acres Gazette he’s was shocked by the answer and thought he was going to get the green light to build a new $80 million, 80-bed hospital just south of Coconut Point.
“We have beds at Lee Memorial Hospital that need to be replaced. It just seems to make sense that we replace them there. We weren’t adding additional bed capacity to Lee County, we were just allocating the beds more appropriately,” Nathan said.
Lee Memorial has 21 days to make a decision on what they want to do going forward. Nathan says the process to get an approval could take up to a year.