California Hospital News Roundup for the Week of November 1, 2013

Jacobs Medical Center, La Jolla

Last week, the UC-San Diego Health System announced that an anonymous donor has committed $25 million to help finance remaining work on the Jacobs Medical Center, provided that the donation is matched by other private contributors, U-T San Diego reports.

If the funding comes through, the health system will meet its goal of obtaining $130 million in private funds for the project, though most of the total $839 million cost will be met through public sources.

The 510,000 square-foot, 245-bed center reached the halfway point of construction last week and is scheduled to open in 2016 (Robbins, U-T San Diego, 10/24).

Kaiser Permanente, Temecula

Kaiser Permanente has dropped plans to build a hospital and medical center in Temecula, according to a company spokesperson, the Riverside Press Enterprise reports (Downey, Riverside Press-Enterprise, 10/28).

The move comes after Kaiser last week submitted to city officials a conceptual plan for a 900,000 square-foot medical campus in Murrieta (California Healthline, 10/25).

Riverside County Regional Medical Center

This week, the California State Association of Counties awarded Riverside County Regional Medical Center the Challenge Award for its successful campaign to reduce surgical site infections, the Riverside Press-Enterprise reports.

In 2011, the medical center developed an education plan for everyone involved in the surgery and care of patients, adopted policies to limit the traffic flow in operating rooms and carefully monitored physicians and staff for compliance. As a result, the standardized infections ratio at the center decreased by 76.26% between 2010 and 2012 (Riverside Press-Enterprise, 10/28).

San Francisco General Hospital

Officials at San Francisco General Hospital on four occasions asked the San Francisco Sheriff's Department to search the medical center for a missing patient who was later found dead, according to an attorney hired by the patient's family, the AP/Contra Costa Times reports (AP/Contra Costa Times, 10/29).

The patient -- a 57-year-old woman -- was admitted to the hospital on Sept. 19 with an infection and was found to be missing from her hospital room on Sept. 21. On Oct. 8, a member of the hospital's engineering staff found the woman's body in a hospital stairwell used as a fire escape (California Healthline, 10/18).

Seton Medical Center, Daly City

Last week, the parents of a stillborn infant whose body was lost at Seton Medical Center and later found at a commercial laundry center filed a lawsuit against the hospital in San Mateo County Superior Court, the San Jose Mercury News reports.

The infant was stillborn at the hospital on Oct. 29. Two days later, then-hospital director James Schuessler told Rina and Julio Arriaza that the infant's body had been covered in a sheet as per hospital protocol but that housekeeping had placed the sheet-wrapped body with the hospital's dirty linens. The body reportedly was found at a Santa Cruz cleaning facility.

Schuessler told the parents that unspecified actions had been taken at the hospital to prevent the situation from occurring again. The hospital also covered the cost of the burial (Melvin, San Jose Mercury News, 10/31).