California Hospital News Roundup for the Week of June 22, 2012
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles
Last Thursday, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles announced that its new women's heart center will be named the Barbra Streisand Women's Heart Center, the Huffington Post reports (Braunstein, Huffington Post, 6/18).
The facility will be named for Streisand in recognition of her philanthropic efforts in the field of heart disease.
The center will be directed by C. Noel Bairey Merz, a cardiologist and renowned expert on women's cardiovascular disease (Cedars-Sinai Medical Center release, 6/15).
El Camino Hospital, Mountain View
On Tuesday, El Camino Hospital District's board of directors voted 4-0 to let Santa Clara County voters decide whether to approve a ballot initiative that would cap El Camino Hospital executives' salaries at twice the California governor's annual pay, the San Jose Mercury News reports.
The board voted on the measure after the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West collected enough signatures to qualify it for the November ballot.  Board members could have avoided an election by adopting the measure, but they said the issue should be decided by voters. Board members also said they oppose capping hospital executives' pay because it would make it difficult to attract the best employees (Green, San Jose Mercury News, 6/20).
Marin General Hospital, Greenbrae
An arbitrator recently ruled that Sutter Health must pay Marin General Hospital $21.5 million, the San Francisco Business Times reports (Rauber, San Francisco Business Times, 6/19).
Sutter Health is Marin General's former parent system. In 2010, Marin General's local operating corporation sued Sutter on the grounds that the health system had inappropriately transferred at least $120 million in assets to its centralized reserves rather than investing in Marin General. The hospital's claims against Sutter totaled $300 million.
Arbitrator Rebecca Westerfield found that Sutter owed Marin General only for a few of the allegations (Carlson, Modern Healthcare, 6/19).
Sharp Chula Vista Medical Center
On Saturday, Sharp Chula Vista Medical Center held a community open house for its new $36 million Douglas & Nancy Barnhart Cancer Center, U-T San Diego reports.
The 45,000 square-foot center includes a private patient entrance, radiation treatment rooms and a rooftop garden where chemotherapy patients can be treated.
The center is expected to begin accepting patients in late summer (Lavelle, U-T San Diego, 6/14).
St. Mary Medical Center, Apple Valley
Last Wednesday, registered nurses at St. Mary Medical Center in Apple Valley picketed for additional staff in the hospital's emergency department, the Victorville Daily Press reports.
During the 2011 fiscal year, the hospital's ED treated an average of 217 patients per day, according to St. Mary officials.
The nurses said they sometimes cannot work under hospital policy or protocol when managing the influx of patients. They also said that a new computer system that was intended to streamline the treatment process is slowing down health care services because the nurses did not receive adequate training.
Randy Bevilacqua -- spokesperson for St. Mary -- said, "We have a very busy emergency room, and we do a very good job of accommodating the situation." He said, "We staff the need and provide high-quality care" (Shimura, Victorville Daily Press, 6/14).
UC-San Francisco Medical Center
Last Thursday, UC-San Francisco Medical Center announced that is has surpassed the $400 million milestone in fundraising efforts for a $1.52 billion, 289-bed hospital complex located in Mission Bay, the San Francisco Business Times reports.
However, the medical center still must raise about $200 million to reach its stated goal of raising $600 million in philanthropic funding (Rauber, San Francisco Business Times, 6/14).
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