California Hospital News Roundup for the Week of April 25, 2008
Entertainer Barbra Streisand has donated $5 million to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center to endow a research and education program on women's heart disease, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports. The hospital last week announced the creation of the Barbra Streisand Women's Cardiovascular Research Education Program (Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 4/17).
Officials at Community Memorial Hospital plan to replace the existing facility with a $200 million, 320-square-foot hospital that will meet state earthquake safety standards, the Ventura County Star reports.
Hospital officials will hold planning meetings to gather community input on the project's impact on parking, traffic, the landscape and nearby neighborhoods. The new hospital will include:
- 242 total beds, the same as the current facility;
- 11 additional emergency department beds and 10 additional critical care unit beds;
- Two more operating rooms; and
- Two more catheterization labs.
Last week, Doctors Medical Center San Pablo filed a plan in federal court to emerge from bankruptcy, the Contra Costa Times reports (Lochner, Contra Costa Times, 4/17).
Last week, the creditors approved the agreement, and the hospital also received two grants worth $15 million from Kaiser Permanente and John Muir Health (Hogarth, East Bay Business Times, 4/18).
About 1,000 creditors have unsecured claims against the hospital totaling about $18.7 million, according to Elaine Hammond, bankruptcy attorney for the West Contra Costa Healthcare District, which owns the hospital. There also are about 600 and 700 employee claims, mostly for unpaid pensions, that total about $2.5 million, according to interim CFO Meredith Price.
The plan calls for vendors, suppliers and other major creditors with unsecured claims to receive about 40 cents for every dollar over a four-year period, Hammond said. Smaller creditors with claims totaling $5,000 or less would receive about 50 cents on the dollar.
Officials said the hospital could emerge from bankruptcy by July, pending approval of the plan by a judge (Lochner, Contra Costa Times, 4/17).
Kaiser Permanente is moving forward with two $1.5 billion projects that include construction of a new hospital in San Leandro and the rebuilding of its main campus in Oakland, the San Francisco Business Times reports.
The 263-bed San Leandro hospital will connect to a hospital support building with physician offices, clinics and ancillary services, Debra Lambert, Kaiser spokesperson, said.
Meanwhile, the first phase of an $80 million hospital on the main campus in Oakland is 35% complete, and the facility should open in the summer of 2009, officials said. The facility will be 50% larger than the current hospital and have about 350 patient beds, about the same capacity as the current building, rebuild project director Michael Lane said (Rauber [1], San Francisco Business Times, 4/21).
A small group of Oakdale residents is opposing a ballot measure that would provide $27 million to help complete the construction of a new facility to replace Oak Valley Hospital and meet state earthquake safety standards, the Modesto Bee reports.
The ballot measure would cost property owners about $11.35 per $100,000 of their property's assessed value, and owners would pay the fee annually for 30 years, the Bee reports.
The residents opposing the measure maintain that the full details of the project have not been presented to the public.
Hospital bond chair Mickey Peabody said the same group of residents opposed a $37 million bond measure approved in 2004 (Hightower, Modesto Bee, 4/17).
Contra Costa County's Health Services unit is attempting to replace Richmond Health Center with a new multispecialty clinic on the campus of Doctors Medical Center San Pablo, the East Bay Business Times reports.
The more than 125 physicians, nurses and health professionals at the clinic would be able to access Doctors' cancer and cardiology centers, according to William Walker, director of Contra Costa Health Services. In turn, the clinic's referrals "could bring needed volume to the hospital," the Business Times reports.
The county Board of Supervisor's Capital Facilities Planning Committee and the Doctors Medical Center Management Authority have given the project conceptual approval, Walker said (Hogarth, East Bay Business Times, 4/18).
Tri-City Medical Center's board is attempting to cut more than $200 million from its proposed bond for upgrading its ED to increase the chances of voter approval, the San Diego Union-Tribune reports.
Consultants said the price of the bond measure could drop from $778 million to $563 million if:
- The project was expedited to avoid inflation;
- The proposed second tower could be moved to avoid destroying the current tower; and
- Some improvements were built as shells until more funds could be obtained to finish them.
Allen Coleman, vice president of strategic services for the hospital district, said $695 million in bonds would cost property owners almost $26 for each $100,000 of assessed value (Sherman, San Diego Union-Tribune, 4/25).
UC-San Francisco's proposed $1.66 billion women's, children's and cancer hospital in Mission Bay is expected to boost clinical care and biomedical research, the San Francisco Business Times reports.
The cancer research center is expected to open in 2009, while the complete 289-bed hospital is expected to open in 2013 at the earliest.
Other research facilities expected to be added to the Mission Bay campus include a multidisciplinary cardiovascular research center and a neuroscience center, according to Sam Hawgood, interim dean of UCSF's School of Medicine (Rauber [2], San Francisco Business Times, 4/21).