California Hospital News Roundup for the Week of July 29, 2011
Community Memorial Health System, Ventura
Community Memorial Health System plans to issue $345 million in bonds through the city of Ventura, Bloomberg reports.
The revenue bonds will be used to finance a six-story replacement hospital in the city. The new facility will be built to comply with state seismic requirements (Frier, Bloomberg, 7/25).
Department of Veterans Affairs, French Camp
The Department of Veterans Affairs has selected French Camp as the site for a new $280 million veterans' health care facility, the Stockton Record reports.
The decision ends years of uncertainty about where VA would build the facility. Over the past year, both French Camp and Stockton vied to serve as the location for the new medical center. The new facility will include a 120-bed nursing home and a 165,000 square-foot outpatient clinic (Johnson, Stockton Record, 7/28).
Palomar Pomerado Health System, San Diego
San Diego's Palomar Pomerado Health System has deployed the Cisco Cius enterprise Android tablet in a pilot trial to allow physicians to access certain mobile health applications, eWeek reports.
The health system has built a set of applications -- called Medical Information Anytime Anywhere -- that allow physicians to view electrocardiogram wave forms, heart rates, radiology images and electronic health records. Orlando Portale, chief innovation officer for Palomar Pomerado, said the health system already has distributed 15 to 20 tablets to physicians and plans to soon distribute another 30 to 50 devices (Horowitz, eWeek, 7/22).
Prebys Cardiovascular Institute, La Jolla
San Diego developer Conrad Prebys has donated $45 million to Scripps Health to help fund a new cardiovascular institute in La Jolla, the San Diego Union-Tribune reports. The gift is the largest in Scripps' history.
The seven-story, $456 million center -- which will be named the Prebys Cardiovascular Institute -- is scheduled to open in 2015 (Lavelle, San Diego Union-Tribune, 7/27). The facility will have 108 private patient rooms, 60 intensive care beds, six operating rooms and up to six cardiac catheterization laboratories (Clark, HealthLeaders Media, 7/27).
St. Vincent Medical Center, Los Angeles
St. Vincent Medical Center has awarded a contract to Columbus, Ohio-based Language Access Network to provide the hospital with video language interpretation services, Healthcare IT News reports.
Hospital officials said they were looking for a system to meet St. Vincent's high demand for interpretation services. The language services will be delivered using Language Access Network's dedicated broadband network and its proprietary remote video interpretation equipment (Miliard, Healthcare IT News, 7/25).
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