California Hospital News Roundup for the Week of March 13, 2015

Antelope Valley Hospital, Lancaster

Officials from Antelope Valley Hospital are disputing allegations from a nurses union that an electronic health record outage caused the hospital's emergency department to close, Becker's Health IT & CIO Review reports (Jayanthi, Becker's Health IT & CIO Review, 3/10).

Last week, the California Nurses Association/National Nurses United asked the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health to investigate the Feb. 27 outage (California Healthline, 3/6). The nurses contended that the incident put patients at risk (CNA release, 3/2).

In a statement, hospital officials said "downtime procedures" were initiated during the outage and more than 900 patients were treated in the ED over the course of the weekend.  Some patients were sent to other facilities for care (Becker's Health IT & CIO Review, 3/10).

California Pacific Medical Center, San Francisco

Physicians at California Pacific Medical Center have successfully completed a series of kidney transplant operations involving six patients, the San Francisco Chronicle reports (Colliver, San Francisco Chronicle, 3/6).

The hospital planned the "rare series" of six linked kidney transplants after a computer program helped match donors with recipients. Once one patient received a kidney, that patient's incompatible friend or relative donated a kidney to another patient in need (California Healthline, 3/6). The surgeries are considered the West Coast's largest paired donation chain in a single hospital (San Francisco Chronicle, 3/6).

Doctors Medical Center, San Pablo

Fewer than half of respondents to a recent poll said they support a $150 parcel tax that would keep Doctors Medical Center operational, according to Eric Zell, chair of the hospital's governing board, KQED's "State of Health" reports.

According to "State of Health," the parcel tax requires a two-thirds majority to pass.

Zell said the hospital is planning to sell some of its property to the city and then will decide in coming weeks whether to stay open or shutdown (Hossaini, "State of Health," KQED, 3/5).

Lodi Memorial Hospital

California Attorney General Kamala Harris (D) has scheduled a public hearing for March 23 to review the potential sale of Lodi Memorial Hospital, the Lodi News-Sentinel reports.

According to the Lodi News-Sentinel, the hearing is one of the final steps before the hospital officially can substitute its affiliation with Lodi Memorial Hospital Association with an affiliation with Adventist Health.  Adventist Health has said it would retain most of the medical center's employees (Bonnett, Lodi News-Sentinel, 3/11).

Saddleback Memorial Medical Center, San Clemente

San Clemente City Manager James Makshanoff said the city is working to identify a site to build a new hospital in case MemorialCare Health System decides to close its San Clemente hospital and emergency department, the Orange County Register reports (Swegles, Orange County Register, 3/9).

MemorialCare is considering replacing Saddleback Memorial Medical Center with a new outpatient care center (California Health Line, 11/14/14). According to the Register, some residents have expressed concern that such a decision would result in a gap in care (Swegles, Orange County Register, 3/9).

San Francisco General Hospital

UC-San Francisco has reported a security breach involving patients' records at San Francisco General Hospital, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.

UCSF reported to the San Francisco Department of Public Health that a physician who worked at the hospital between 2005 and 2013 took copies of patients' records from the medical center.

Health department officials said the breach is under investigation and they do not yet know how many patients were affected or when the incident occurred. Officials said affected patients would be notified as officials work to retrieve the records (Allday, San Francisco Chronicle, 3/6).

Sutter Medical Foundation

The Sutter Medical Foundation is planning to consolidate its cancer treatment services into a new facility in Roseville, the Sacramento Business Journal reports.

Construction is scheduled to begin in May and finish by July 2016. The 60,000 square-foot building will include a surgery center, a health and healing center, classrooms for training, 47 infusion bays for chemotherapy patients, a pharmacy and oncology offices (van der Meer, Sacramento Business Journal, 3/9).