By HFT Staff

Encompass Health has announced the opening of Encompass Health Rehabilitation Hospital of Houston at The Medical Center in Texas. The 61-bed inpatient rehabilitation hospital is Encompass Health's first hospital fully constructed using prefabricated modules. This construction method, pursued in collaboration with Alabama-based company, BLOX, resulted in enhanced quality control, less waste and a condensed design and construction timeline?enabling Encompass Health Rehabilitation Hospital of Houston at The Medical Center to serve Houston patients sooner.

Encompass Health and BLOX began working together in the early 2000s with a shared vision to build higher quality and more cost-efficient hospitals. Initially, BLOX manufactured bathroom pods off-site in an assembly line format at their facility in Bessemer, Alabama for installation at new Encompass Health hospitals. Since that time, both companies have grown rapidly, and BLOX has progressed from producing bathrooms to headwall modules and patient rooms, to a fully prefabricated hospital.

BLOX utilized its DesignManufactureConstruct (DMC) approach to manufacture and ship 80 uber-modules to Houston, where a team of on-site specialists stitched them into a completed hospital. The DMC process is notably fast and capable of delivering completed buildings much more quickly than traditional construction methods.

The nearly 70,000-square-foot freestanding location in the heart of The Medical Center allows for simpler transfers from other facilities and more convenient access for families and visitors. Amenities include all private patient rooms, a spacious therapy gym featuring advanced rehabilitation technologies, an activities of daily living suite, in-house dialysis suite, therapy courtyard, dining room, in-house pharmacy and dayroom areas.

An interdisciplinary team of highly specialized nurses, therapists and physicians provide physical, occupational and speech therapies to help patients recovering from strokes, brain injuries, spinal cord injuries, amputations and complex orthopedic conditions restore function and quality of life. Patients receive a minimum of three hours of intensive therapy for five days each week, frequent physician visits and 24-hour nursing care.