LOS ROBLES: Medical Center Opens New East Campus Annex

      The Los Robles Regional Medical Center is debuting its "new East Campus annex," the Ventura County Star reports. The new facility, which is "located in the former Charter Hospital ... in Thousand Oaks will house Los Robles' transitional care, acute rehabilitation and geriatric psychiatric units." It will also "add another 69 patient beds" to Los Robles. The new facility increases the "number of transitional care beds from 11 at the main hospital to 42 beds at the new location." The transitional care beds are for "patients who have mostly recovered from surgery or treatment but are not well enough to return home." According to Michael Glasberg, associate administrator of Los Robles, the new transitional care beds were a critical need. "We expanded the transitional care unit over here to meet the need we were seeing. We often had a full unit over at the hospital," he said. The Star reports that the "new facility allows the hospital to create and expand new services as well as freeing beds at the main hospital, where capacity has been pressed this flu season." In addition, the "closing of Westlake Medical Center by Los Robles' parent company, Columbia/HCA [Healthcare Corp.] in 1996, led to controversy and accusations the company was reducing patients' options." However, "Los Robles East Campus has no emergency room to replace the one lost with Westlake Medical Center" (Hughey, 1/30).