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$200 million hospital plan for Ventura introduced
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Community Memorial Hospital officials are unveiling plans for a nearly $200 million construction project that city and hospital leaders say will be one of the biggest and most expensive in Ventura history.
Pushed by state earthquake regulations calling for hospitals to meet seismic safety standards by a 2013 deadline, Community Memorial officials plan to build a 320,000-square-foot hospital next to the existing building.
"It means continuing or closing the doors. It's everything," hospital President and CEO Gary Wilde said of the project. "It modernizes the hospital. It increases our capacity in the emergency room, critical care and operating rooms. It puts us in a position to take care of the community for many decades."
Public meetings aimed at helping Community Memorial finalize a master plan for the hospital begin Monday, the first step in an approval process that involves Ventura and the state. Depending on barriers that emerge, the process could take 18 months to three years, Wilde said.
Construction could begin in 2010, and the hospital could open sometime in 2013.
The planning meetings won't focus on actual construction details or the new hospital's interior. Instead, they are aimed at gathering community input on the overall impact of the project. Parking, traffic, the landscape and the effect on surrounding neighborhoods will be discussed.
Hospital project leaders will absorb the input and come back to the city with a plan on how to address the various effects. An actual construction plan won't be submitted to the city until later.
Ventura Mayor Christy Weir characterized the magnitude of the six-story building project in a word: "huge."
She said the challenge will be to incorporate the new building into a neighborhood that blends doctor's offices with homes, clinics and both Community Memorial Hospital and Ventura County Medical Center. She said neighbors might evaluate the project in terms of two factors: traffic and parking.
"People don't want visitors to a hospital parking in front of their house," she said.
As proposed, the hospital would sit immediately behind the existing facility bordering Brent Street and what is now Cabrillo Street on property purchased by Community Memorial over the past year. One piece of property is still being acquired.
"I don't think traffic will be dramatically different," said Adam Thunell, the hospital's chief operating officer, noting exact parking and traffic plans will depend in part on the meetings. "Honestly, I think it will be improved."
The new hospital would include 242 beds, the same as the current building. All the rooms would be private, following an industry trend.
"It's what consumers want," said Mike Ellingson, the hospital's vice president of marketing and development.
The hospital plans to build a 33-bed emergency room — 11 more than in the current facility. The critical care unit would include 10 additional beds, for a total of 30. There would be two additional operating rooms and two more catheterization labs where patients are diagnosed and treated for cardiovascular diseases.
Ellingson said the construction is being pushed by seismic regulations for hospitals but is also driven by need.
"We're practicing modern healthcare in a facility that was built 50 years ago," he said.
Construction would cost nearly $200 million, but equipment, anticipated retrofitting needs at Community Memorial's sister facility, Ojai Valley Community Hospital, and other costs could increase the price to about $275 million. Virtually all of the construction money would be borrowed through bonds, Wilde said.
Community Memorial would keep its existing Ventura building and is still planning its exact uses. It might house laboratories, administrative and medical offices and services like laundry, Wilde said. Some of the space might also be rented to start-up businesses that need to be close to a hospital. Because it would no longer house patients, it would not need seismic retrofitting.
Posted by shaver_one on April 18, 2008 at 12:49 p.m. (Suggest removal)
1. Several years ago, VCMC needed to expand. CMH fought that expansion. CMH got a 'sweetheart' deal of sharing county employees' medical needs. CMH dropped the fight.
How much will CMH give to VCMC to mitigate possible loss of business at the County facility?
2. "All the rooms would be private, following an industry trend."
That trend, charging more for a private room than is charged for a semi-private room.
3. Since, it seems, the new hospital will be roughly the same size as the existing hospital...and CMH is not going to use the existing hospital as a hospital...wouldn't it make more fiscal sense to simply upgrade the existing hospital?
4. This is one of the problems with America's health care system. CMH is a for-profit hospital...and, with this new construction, is looking for ways to increase its own profit margin. Of course, now it has Kaiser Permanente to boost its revenues.
The rich get richer, and the sick...die.
Posted by moondoggie on April 18, 2008 at 2:22 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Oh stuff it. Government isn't supposed to compete with the private sector. Community Mem. is one of the best hospital in Southern California and you are worried about "losses" to the County? Oh stuff it.
Posted by Tom_Johnston on April 18, 2008 at 5:24 p.m. (Suggest removal)
First, CMH needs to upgrade it's facilities. It is, and has been a fine facility that provides excellent care. The same is true for all hospitals in Ventura County, including the cross-town Ventura County Medical Center. The seismic safety standards referred to are real, and most hospitals are not able to meet those standards with existing structures. Some can be modified, many cannot. CMH is in that latter position. So is VCMC. Some facilities are in the process of upgrading already.
shaver, CMH is a non-profit facility. We might be able to banter about their deserved nature of tax exemptions as a non-profit, but they are non-profit. VCMC is a "safety net" hospital.
In Ventura County, Los Robles and Thousand Oaks Surgical Hospital (a "boutique" hospital) are for profit. I believe all other medical/surgical hospitals in Ventura County are non-profit.
"shaver" is right, that CMH fought an expansion at VCMC. However, expansion isn't quite the most accurate way to view it, since nearly all of the facilities that would have been replaced were near on to 70 years old (at the time, now they would have been 80-90). The main med-surg wing is of about the same vintage as CMH's building..about 50-60 years old. They were built for a different time, so "expansion" isn't quite the right term. Modernizing is more appropriate.
CMH however does not need to "mitigate loss" to VCMC, though CMH's bad behavior during the Measure X years probably should be considered. Perhaps some penance for past mis-behavior could be in order, but it isn't necessary.
The reality is, that CMH does not, for the very main part, provide care to the population that VCMC does. It never did, and never will. VCMC does not cater to the clientel of CMH, other than the cost-savings to taxpayers of offering a CHOICE of a county provided health care plan to its own employees.
Many would hold up the VCMC system of hospitals (VCMC and Santa Paula Hospital) and it's clinic system as a potential national model for how basic health care should be provided.
Both CMH and St. John's Oxnard provide services to VCMC under contract for procedures not done at VCMC.
CMH (and other private hospitals) routinely transfer, or try to transfer with bed space permitting, patients that require "safety net" coverage to VCMC....as they should. That is what VCMC is about. It is what we specialize in. We are darn good at it.
In these troubled economic times, where health insurance coverage is more at risk, the people of Ventura County should be glad there is such a vital, active and high quality facility at VCMC that will take you when no one else will (unless forced to under Federal laws that require ER admits to be treated).
I know this to be true, since I was in that position once. It remains true today.
So...."mm", guess who should "stuff it"?
Posted by spokenit on April 19, 2008 at 10:31 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Why shouldnt there be a hospital for those who actually pay for and have medical insurance? Not so much a PRIVATE hospital but one for those of us that work hard for our money and would appreciate something to show for it. Why do us insurance "payers" have to be shoved into a room w/ nonspeaking, illegal, nonpaying people. As unfair as you think it is for them, it is just as unfair for us that pay top $$ medical insurance not to have something of our own. Get real people hand outs can only go so far, and thats fine but if your hand only reaches so far stop trying bite off ours that pay for it.
Posted by lizlemon on April 19, 2008 at 7:37 p.m. (Suggest removal)
As Tom_Johnston states, CMH is a non-profit hospital. In addition, CMH takes medi-cal, so you just might be sharing a room with "non-speaking, illegal, nonpaying people" anyway, contrary to what spokenit thinks. Not only are private rooms what patients want, it makes more sense from an infection control and HIPAA standpoint. Don't forget that CMH is a different entity than it was in the Measure X years: New CEO, new board.
Posted by bbz7goog on April 19, 2008 at 10:51 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Good for CMH. A hospital moving onward and upward. And the vagrants, gangsters, illegals and the rest of the third world from Central America can get dumped at Tijuana General- oops, I mean VCMC. How's the drug resistant Tuberculosis over there by the way? No, please don't come too close I don't want to catch it from you. Tom Johnson, clearly a Tijuana General administrator, is a little hyperdefensive about all the hullaballoo at CMH. Must have spent Friday afternoon writing messages to the paper's website. True to form for a "good enough for government" employee. Must have learned the ropes at King-Drew.
Posted by uknow1 on April 20, 2008 at 8:54 a.m. (Suggest removal)
CMH is a facility that exploits the current payor system to the inth degree. They are a BIG part of the problem and offer no viable solutions to what is wrong with the American healthcare system. Go to the emergency room for a minor ailment with P.P.O. insurance, meet with a nurse for five minutes and a doctor for five minutes and voila, you have a $2000 bill. Then, they'll encourage you to come back to the emergency room instead of advising you to see your private doctor so they can double-dip your P.P.O. policy.
Thousaand Oaks Surgical Hospital is not a "boutique hospital". It is a hospital that has set the standard of care for surgical patients so high that archaic, old school hospitals like CMH, St. John's and Los Robles can't compete with the level of service provided there. Not until Thousand Oaks Surgical Hospital opened in 2005 did the other hospitals start paying lip-service to "what the patient wants". Before that there was no viable choice. That is exactly why a bunch of Ventura Couty doctors started Thousand Oaks Surgical Hospital. They were sick and tired of the status quo.
Now that Thousand Oaks Surgical Hospital has set the standard of care in Ventura County, all of the others are scrambling to play catch-up, and do away with their three-patient, depressing rooms, institutional food, abrupt nurses, staph infections, high mortality rates and the rest of the problems they had not previously addressed.
As someone who has been to Thousand Oaks Surgical Hospital, it is no wonder patients LOVE IT! You decide: www.toshospital.com
I have to admit it is difficult for the other hospitals to compete when they have to close-down whole wings of the hospital, or the ENTIRE hospital due to rampant infections:
http://www.venturacountystar.com/news...
and fungus blooms:
http://www.venturacountystar.com/news...
I know where I'll go the next time I need surgery....
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