Hospitals Announce Sales, Construction News
California Healthline highlights recent hospital news, including sales and construction developments. Summaries appear below.
Community Medical Centers on Tuesday announced plans to sell the 99-bed Alzheimer's Living Center in Fresno to Elimcare Communities, the Fresno Bee reports. The deal, which is expected to be finalized this week, will make Elimcare the largest Fresno-area provider of long-term care to Alzheimer's patients.
Community officials said patient care would not be interrupted during the transition, which they said would be completed by Aug. 15. They added that Elimcare plans to hire many of the facility's 100 employees. Terms of the deal were not disclosed (Correa, Fresno Bee, 6/22).
Catholic Healthcare West on Thursday announced it will expand the emergency department at Methodist Hospital and open additional physician and lab services in Elk Grove, Laguna and Galt, the Sacramento Bee reports. The projects are expected to cost more than $100 million.
Mike Uboldi, service area president for CHW, said construction plans for the ED have been filed with state regulators. He said the construction would cost about $14 million but did not give additional details. Uboldi said the expansion is necessary because the hospital and the clinics would serve one of the fastest growing areas in California.
The ED at Methodist is expected to see 35,908 patients this year, up from 28,912 in 2002 (Rapaport, Sacramento Bee, 6/24).
Palomar Pomerado Health district on Wednesday began selling the first of $496 million in bonds approved by Proposition BB to fund various hospital construction efforts, the San Diego Union-Tribune reports. The initial $80 million in bonds will be issued to investors beginning on July 7.
The bonds will finance the construction of a new flagship hospital at an undecided location in inland North San Diego County and several urgent care centers. The bonds also will fund upgrades at Pomerado Hospital in Poway and Palomar Medical Center in Escondido (Lee, San Diego Union-Tribune, 6/23).
University of California-Berkeley officials on Thursday announced they had received a $40 million donation from Li Ka-shing, a Hong Kong billionaire, to help build a new health sciences center, the Contra Costa Times reports.
The donation will pay one-quarter of the cost of the $160 million center, which will be named the Li Ka-shing Center for Biomedical and Health Sciences. The center will be part of UC-Berkeley's Health Sciences Initiative and will house a brain-imaging center and more than 30 laboratories for researching cancer, brain diseases, infectious diseases and stem cells (Krupnick, Contra Costa Times, 6/24). Completion of the center is expected in 2009 (Los Angeles Times, 6/24).