Despite a hard-fought certificate of need being approved one year ago, Poinciana and Solivita residents are still awaiting real progress to be made for a hospital to handle community needs.

Friends of Poinciana Hospital, a community group organized to secure a hospital for residents, sponsored a breakfast meeting at the Solivita ballroom Monday with Brian Marger, chief operating officer of Osceola Regional Medical Center in Kissimmee, owned by Hospital Corporation of America, to update residents on the hospital’s progress.

Many of the more than 200 residents who attended the meeting seemed frustrated at the passage of time without ground even being broken for the $120 million, 60-bed hospital.

Marger told the crowd, which he said was much bigger than he’d expected, that hospital officials were still in contract negotiations with Avatar Properties, the land development group that owns the 40-acre site where the new facility would go.

“2009 was an extremely difficult year,” Marger said. “We were hit harder, I think, in Florida. A lot of projects were up and they didn’t have the capital to complete the project. There are a lot of people in line for capital and it’s been very hard to get that over the last year and a half.”

Marger said officials with his hospital have been “working diligently” with Avatar representatives to secure the land.

“We’ve had a good partnership with Avatar,” he said. “I know they want to get this done as much as everyone in this room. Right now, it’s not about us and Avatar; it’s about attorneys and attorneys.”

The hospital official said he believed the site for the hospital, which has been shifted slightly east from its original location and will be close to Wachovia Bank off of Cypress Parkway, will be under contract in the second quarter of this year.

Marger said medical offices covering 40,000 to 60,000 square feet should be completed in 18 months. The hospital, he said, would take about three years to finish. He said he hopes the hospital and medical offices would be built concurrently.

“I agree with you that this has been a painfully slow process and I want to thank you for your patience,” Marger told the crowd. “Our company has not started a new hospital in the last two years, so it’s not a Poinciana thing.

“We are fully committed to this project. I wish I had a bulldozer across the street right now, but that’s just not realistic. Activity is certainly going on behind the scenes.”

When completed, the hospital, Marger said, would offer CT scan, ultrasound, outpatient services, an imaging lab and urgent care. The facility would be a full-service hospital but not a high-end, acute care center, such as offering neurosurgery or open-heart surgery. There also are no plans to carry radiation and chemotherapy treatment areas for outpatients. But the hospital will have a helipad to transport patients, Marger said.

Several doctors from the area, both primary care and specialists, have expressed interest in becoming part of the physician base at the new hospital, Marger said.

After the meeting, several residents approached Marger with questions.

“The community has been so patient, so involved, both physically and emotionally that it’s hard to sit back and wait for decisions,” he said after answering their questions. “They’ve been very patient.

Prior to the Certificate of Need being granted, efforts to secure a hospital in Poinciana were met with friction. The most notable obstacles came from St. Cloud Regional Medical Center — partially owned by Naples-based Health Management Associates — which filed appeals against building the hospital, claiming there was no need for a hospital in Poinciana because all necessary services could be provided by the St. Cloud facility.

Studies involving traffic and time delays from Poinciana to St. Cloud were conducted to show the importance of time during emergency trips to the hospital.

Over the course of numerous time runs from Poinciana – as conveyed by court documents – Osceola Regional Medical Center was reached in 28 to 32 minutes; St. Cloud in 44 to 48 minutes; Celebration Health in 39 to 43 minutes; and 28 to 31 minutes to Heart of Florida in Haines City. The time it would take to reach the new Poinciana hospital would be five to 11 minutes.