The Torrevieja University Hospital is set to expand its Rehabilitation Service with a new prefabricated modular building, following a public tender issued by the Valencia regional Health Department. The €1.15 million project will see modules built off-site and assembled next to the hospital’s west façade, covering around 350 square metres.
The single-storey building will include a reception and waiting area, four consultation rooms, staff changing rooms, a gym, patient changing areas, storage, and three treatment rooms, one with its own bathroom. Construction is expected to take three and a half months once the contract is finalised.
The expansion is being driven by rising demand. The hospital’s current rehabilitation area, located on the second floor of the west wing, is at full capacity, limiting patients to a set number of sessions regardless of their recovery progress. Accessibility has also been a concern: patients often face complicated routes from parking areas or the ground floor, with non-adapted pavements, lifts, and long corridors, making visits particularly challenging for those with reduced mobility.
Although the investment is modest compared with earlier government promises of more than €20 million, it marks the largest infrastructure project at the hospital since the regional government resumed direct management in 2021. Until now, improvements focused mainly on doubling staff numbers and upgrading medical technology, including dialysis and laboratory equipment.
The new modular facility will not free up existing rehabilitation space for other uses, such as hospital beds, which remain in high demand. Torrevieja Hospital currently has around 230 beds—mostly single rooms—but often has to double occupancy to meet patient needs.
The hospital now serves nearly 230,000 people from Torrevieja, Orihuela Costa, Pilar de la Horadada, Rojales, Guardamar del Segura, San Fulgencio, San Miguel de Salinas, Los Montesinos, Benijófar, and Formentera del Segura—more than double the population it was originally designed to serve and a population that increases enormously during holiday periods.
Local councils and residents have called for a larger expansion or even a second hospital on the Costa Blanca to relieve pressure on emergency care, surgery, and specialist consultations, and to reduce the growing reliance on private healthcare in the region.
