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UCI Med Center is looking to build its Medicare practice, in the Healthcare column



Beswick Joins Anaheim Memorial; Kaiser Loses Arbitration Case

Dr. Ralph Cygan, UCI Medical Center’s chief executive, has a few other things on his mind besides building a new hospital and keeping business up without managed healthcare contracts. One of those things involves increasing the Orange hospital’s presence in Medicare.

“Medicare is extraordinarily important to academic teaching facilities like the UCI Medical Center,” Cygan said. “Historically, we’ve had a relatively small proportion of our census and our budget come from Medicare patients. That gets back to the legacy of this hospital as a county hospital.”

The University of California, Irvine acquired the medical center from the county in 1976.

Medicare has become a larger part of UCI Medical Center’s mix in recent years, according to Cygan. He said the hospital’s seen a gradual increase in its Medicare population as it puts programs in place for older patients.

Cygan said efforts included adding five board-certified geriatricians to the medical staff and this month’s scheduled opening of a geropsychiatry unit. There is a need throughout Orange County for such services, he said, adding that the county’s population of people 65 and older is projected to double within the next 20 years.

“Obviously, seniors have more healthcare needs than the 20-year-old,” Cygan said. “So, there’s going to be an increasing need for high-quality tertiary care for seniors and UCI, I believe, will play a more important role in the future.”

Anaheim Memorial Gets New Leader

Melinda Beswick is the new chief executive of Anaheim Memorial Medical Center, a 224-bed hospital. Beswick replaces Mike Carter, who now is a healthcare consultant. Prior to Beswick’s arrival, Frances Hanckel was acting chief executive.

Memorial Health Services, Anaheim Memorial’s owner, was impressed with Beswick’s “wide range of experience in hospital administration,” said Thomas Collins, president and chief executive, in a release. Before coming to Anaheim Memorial, Beswick was with California Hospital Medical Center, a Los Angeles facility where she had been president since 1996. Beswick has prior Orange County hospital experience: she was associate administrator and director of nursing at FHP Hospital in Fountain Valley.

Anaheim Medical Center is the 11th-largest hospital in Orange County and reported earnings from operations of $3.4 million and net patient revenue of $71.7 million in 1999. It is part of Memorial Health Services, a five-hospital, not-for-profit system that serves Long Beach and Orange County. Other OC Memorial facilities include Orange Coast Memorial Medical Center in Fountain Valley and Saddleback Memorial Medical Center in Laguna Hills.

Statuto on St. Joe Paring

Richard Statuto, president and chief executive of St. Joseph Health System, Orange, was interviewed by Deloitte & Touche for a recent newsletter in which he discussed technology, coping with the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 and the hospital system’s research and development department.

Statuto also talked about St. Joseph’s decision to pare its Southern California managed healthcare network from 17 to five health plans. He told Deloitte & Touche that he came to believe that “a provider cannot be successful catering to 20 different payer systems.”

St. Joseph was fully at risk for the healthcare of about 400,000 enrollees, according to Statuto. He told Deloitte & Touche that the system found “that a lot of that risk was uncontrollable,” adding that the network paring involves both reduced risks to the health system and increased rates from the health plans.

On doctors, Statuto noted that St. Joseph has tried to offer choice in what the relationships would be, ranging from medical practice foundation to independent practice association. He also said St. Joseph has been able to align with “higher quality physicians” in most of its marketplaces.

Arbitrators Rule Against Kaiser

Kaiser Permanente, which has 314,000 members in Orange County, recently was ordered by a panel of private arbitrators from Judicate West to pay $842,000 to an unidentified 38-year-old woman in a breast cancer treatment dispute. The award is binding.

The woman does not live in Orange County, according to Kaiser, but Lopez, Hodes, Restaino, Milman, Skikos and Polos, a Newport Beach law firm, represented her. She alleged that Kaiser Permanente negligently delayed diagnosing her cancer.

“Obviously, we have some disagreement with the case,” said Jim Anderson, a Kaiser spokesman. “At this point, we have to move forward and express sympathy for the patient.”

Bits and Pieces:

The holding company that Delta Dental Plan of California belongs to recently changed its name to Dentegra Group Inc. Companies belonging to San Francisco-based Dentegra administer dental benefits to 16.2 million members, including 630,000 enrollees in Orange County Associated Builders and Contractors Inc. selected Pacific Life Underwriting Services, Fountain Valley, to provide group employee benefits, including disability, dental and vision coverage. Pacific Life Underwriting is a unit of Pacific Life Insurance Co., Newport Beach Prescription Solutions, a subsidiary of PacifiCare Health Systems Inc., Santa Ana, recently expanded a quality improvement initiative to increase use of certain recommended medications for depression. Prescription Solutions also announced results of the initiative, which it started in 1999, at the American Society of Health System

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