California Hospital News Roundup for August 15, 2008
Administrators for Arrowhead Regional Medical Center say that they have cut average emergency department wait times by 3.5 hours while the number of patients seeking treatment at the ED has increased sharply, the Riverside Press-Enterprise reports.
To expedite treatment, the hospital remodeled the waiting room by adding cubicles where care providers can treat patients based on the severity of their condition.
The renovations cost less than $1 million, according to the Press-Enterprise (Hines, Riverside Press-Enterprise, 8/10).
Kaiser Permanente members will continue to receive treatment at Community Memorial Hospital through 2018 under a 10-year contract extension announced on Wednesday, the Ventura County Star reports.
Community Memorial is the only hospital in Ventura County to contract with Kaiser (Ventura County Star, 8/14).
Los Altos Hills-based Daughters of Charity Health System has signed a $15.8 million contract with QuadraMed for an electronic health record system and other software applications, the San Francisco Business Times reports.
The hospital chain operates six hospitals in California (Rauber, San Francisco Business Times, 8/8).
Monterey County officials are working to provide ballots to some voters in the Salinas Valley Memorial Healthcare District after more than 5,000 ballots could not be delivered, according to county Registrar of Voters Linda Tulett, the Salinas Californian reports.
Tulett said that county officials were able to find addresses for 2,000 of those voters and resend ballots.
The only proposition on the ballot is Measure W, a $395 million bond measure to help fund hospital renovations (Salinas Californian, 8/12).
The Avon Foundation awarded $1.5 million to the San Francisco General Hospital Foundation to help fund the hospital's breast cancer programs, the Business Times reports.
The foundation said the funds will be used to upgrade mammography equipment, boost funding for clinical trials and peer support programs, and fund its Avon Comprehensive Breast Care Center.
After its Avon Walk for Breast Cancer San Francisco, the Avon Foundation awarded $4.2 million to Bay Area facilities, including:
- Alameda County Medical Center/Highland Hospital;
- UC's California Breast Cancer Research Program; and
- UC-San Francisco (Rauber, San Francisco Business Times, 8/12).
Earlier this week, the National Labor Relations Board scheduled union elections for Sept. 10 and 11 at Stanford Hospital & Clinics and Lucile Packard Children's Hospital, the Bay Area News Group/San Jose Mercury News reports.
The elections come after Stanford declined to recognize United Healthcare Workers as representing about 1,450 Stanford employees because the workers had not directly voted for the union. The employees had been represented by Service Employees International Union Local 715 but UHW is absorbing many SEIU locals representing health care workers as part of an internal organization (Oremus, Bay Area News Group/San Jose Mercury News, 8/14).
