California Hospital News Roundup for the Week of October 11, 2013

Adventist Health, Hanford

On Oct. 10, Adventist Health will break ground on a $40 million, 49,000 square-foot family birth center, which will be located next to the health system's Adventist Medical Center in Hanford, The Business Journal reports.

The new center will have 34 beds, two operating rooms and six neonatal intensive care beds.

The project -- scheduled to be finished in 2015 -- is funded through private gifts and Adventist Health (The Business Journal, 10/3).

Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian, Newport Beach

Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian recently received a $53 million estate donation from the late Jeffrey Carlton, founder and CEO of Press Forge, a Paramount company, the Orange County Register reports.

Carlton -- who passed away in September 2012 -- included plans in his estate to develop a private foundation, which will spend the donation's first $15 million on Hoag's newly renamed Jeffery M. Carlton Heart and Vascular Institute.

Carlton's trustee Mike Buxton said the gift -- which is the largest donation in hospital history -- likely resulted from the connection between Hoag Hospital and Carlton's late father, who was a patient at the facility (Perkes, Orange County Register, 10/8).

Napa State Hospital, San Francisco

The California Department of Public Health recently ruled that Napa State Hospital committed no wrongdoing when it transported a patient with a mental illness to University Medical Center in Las Vegas without notifying her family, the Las Vegas Review Journal reports.

A DPH investigation concluded that the hospital did not violate federal or state regulations by releasing the 26-year-old patient because a court hearing judge had ruled the woman no longer needed a guardian and could make her own decisions.

However, Kimball Pier -- director of Plumas County Mental Health Services, which provided the case manager who delivered the patient out of state -- has been fired for undisclosed reasons (Amaro, Las Vegas Review Journal, 10/1).

In related news, San Francisco on Sept. 11 filed a class-action lawsuit against the state of Nevada over the improper busing of patients with mental illnesses to California (California Healthline, 9/11).

San Francisco General Hospital

The San Francisco Sheriff's Department is investigating why it took San Francisco General Hospital more than two weeks to discover the body of a missing patient in a stairwell, the Los Angeles Times' "L.A. Now" reports.

The patient -- a 57-year-old woman -- was admitted to the hospital on Sept. 19 with an infection and was found to be missing from her hospital room on Sept. 21. The sheriff's department is responsible for security at the hospital and initially searched the building without finding the patient.

On Oct. 8, a member of the hospital's engineering staff found the woman's body in a stairwell used as a fire escape at the hospital (Dolan, "L.A. Now," Los Angeles Times, 10/9).

On Thursday, a spokesperson for the family of the woman said that investigators have found no evidence of foul play, but a spokesperson for the San Francisco medical examiner decline to confirm the announcement, saying that the woman's death still is under investigation (Dolan, "L.A. Now," Los Angeles Times, 10/10).

Sutter Roseville Medical Center

On Monday, Sutter Roseville Medical Center announced that on Dec. 1, it will close its 30-bed subacute care unit -- which provides treatment for patients with tracheotomies or ventilators -- and remodel the unit into a new acute care wing scheduled to open in 2014, the Sacramento Business Journal reports.

Sutter Health said it would help the unit's 62 nurses, respiratory therapists and housekeeping workers find new jobs either at Sutter or elsewhere.

Meanwhile, the unit's 27 patients will be transferred to other certified subacute facilities in the area (Arns, Sacramento Business Journal, 10/7).