California Hospital News Roundup for the Week of July 18, 2008
Last week, Kaiser Permanente officials announced plans to build a 428,078-foot replacement facility for its Fontana hospital, the Riverside Press-Enterprise reports.
Dominic Nigro, assistant hospital administrator at the Fontana medical center, said the facility will be licensed to have 314 patient beds. Nigro said that construction will begin in January 2009, and Kaiser officials say it could open by fall 2013.
Kaiser officials expect the project to cost about $700 million (Bender, Riverside Press-Enterprise, 7/10).
Loma Linda University is working to open additional medical facilities to accommodate population growth in inland Southern California, the Riverside Press-Enterprise reports.
In the past two months, the university has broken ground, opened or announced partnerships for five other facilities in the area.
In addition, Loma Linda has announced plans to build a new $1 billion children's hospital (Santschi/Hirsh, Riverside Press-Enterprise, 7/12).
Workers have begun installing 1,600 solar panels on the roof of Jerry L. Pettis Memorial VA Medical Center as part of an effort by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to use renewable energy at VA hospitals, the Riverside Press-Enterprise reports.
Larry Barrett, energy manager for the hospital, estimates that it will take the system about 21 years to pay for itself but says that the panels would remain functional for more than 30 years if they undergo regular maintenance.
Barrett estimates that the solar panels will provide about 2% of the facility's energy.
Southern California Edison is reimbursing the facility for about one third of the system's $2 million cost as an incentive (Santschi, Riverside Press-Enterprise, 7/14).
Plans to construct a new building for Stanford Hospital as part of a larger renewal project at Stanford University Medical Center are underway, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.
Plans call for a seven-story, 1.1 million square-foot, 600-bed facility that is projected to cost about $2 billion and open in 2015.
Construction will be funded largely by general revenue bonds and private donations (Sturrock, San Francisco Chronicle, 7/13).