California Hospital News Roundup for the Week of Sept. 19, 2008
The Children's Hospital & Research Center hopes to use funds from Proposition 3 on the Nov. 2 statewide ballot to help fund renovations needed to comply with state seismic safety rules, the East Bay Business Times reports.
If approved, Proposition 3 would provide $980 million for children's hospitals statewide, including about $93 million for Children's Hospital & Research Center's Oakland campus.
Children's CEO Frank Tiedemann said that funds would be applied toward a $400 million, five-story hospital building (Hogarth, East Bay Business Times, 9/12).
Kaiser Permanente officials announced that Kaiser's new hospital facility in Modesto will open on Oct. 1, the Modesto Bee reports. The facility won approval from state inspectors last week, Kaiser officials said.
The hospital includes 112 patient beds and includes space for an additional 112 beds on upper floors of the building. The facility also includes an emergency department, birthing center, digitally-outfitted surgery suites and connections to Kaiser's electronic health record system (Carlson, Modesto Bee, 9/18).
Last week, Kindred Healthcare announced that it is selling Kindred Hospital Modesto and a facility in Braintree, Mass., because of financial losses, the Modesto Bee reports.
The company said the two hospitals had combined operating losses of $9.3 million in the first six months of this year, up from $8 million in 2007 (Carlson, Modesto Bee, 9/12).
Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center's new facility in Boyle Heights began treating some patients on Monday, the Los Angeles Times reports. All patients will be moved from the older facility to the new one on Oct. 17 and Oct. 18.
The new facility will include two dozen outpatient clinics (Lin, Los Angeles Times, 9/14).
Last week, state health officials visited St. Agnes Medical Center as part of an investigation, the Fresno Bee reports.
Stacy Vaillancourt, vice president of Marketing and Communications at St. Agnes, said the incident was not related to the cardiac surgery unit that had been the subject of an investigation earlier this year. Vaillancourt did not provide further details (Correa, Fresno Bee, 9/13).
In an Aug. 27 letter, CMS officials informed Sharp Grossmont Hospital that the facility's plan to address quality problems had been accepted and that Sharp Grossmont was no longer in danger of losing eligibility to participate in Medicare and Medicaid, the San Diego Union-Tribune reports.
Patient deaths at the hospital in April prompted the investigation, which identified shortcomings in management and patient care (Clark, San Diego Union-Tribune, 9/13).
Employees at Stanford Hospital & Clinics and Lucile Packard Children's Hospital voted to approve representation by the United Healthcare Workers West union, the Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal reports.
Previously, the workers were represented by the Services Employees International Union Local 715 (Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal, 9/12).
UC-Irvine officials announced that construction of the campus' new hospital facility was completed four months early and on budget, the Orange County Register reports.
The facility was constructed to meet state seismic safety rules (Fisher, Orange County Register, 9/16).