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Kaiser Hospital Hiring Plans Shaping Up

South County is looking at a lot more hospital space,and medical workers,come 2007.

That’s when construction on Kaiser Permanente’s $205 million hospital in Irvine is expected to finish.

Kaiser already is developing hiring plans for the 150-bed facility, where there’s room for an additional 100 beds depending on demand.

It expects to have up to 800 workers,not including doctors,at the hospital. Kaiser’s doctors are employed by a medical group affiliated with the health plan operator.

“(Hiring) consumes a good portion of our time,” said Julie Miller-Phipps, the health system’s senior vice president and Orange County area service manager.

Kaiser is doing a “temperature-check” of its 20,000 Southern California employees to gauge interest in transferring to the hospital on Sand Canyon Avenue, Miller-Phipps said.

Kaiser plans to post positions for nurses, pharmacists and technicians, among others, next February on its internal job board. Decisions on transferring workers are expected to be made in March and April.

Miller-Phipps said California hospitals face some hiring challenges.

“We have a nursing shortage and a pharmacist shortage,” she said.

Kaiser plans to fill positions that still are open by advertising locally, which could lead to hires from other OC facilities.

“We want to let (other hospitals) know early on,we do not want to put other hospitals in jeopardy” if their workers choose to join Kaiser, Miller-Phipps said. “I want to be responsible in this process and transparent with other CEOs.”

Kaiser contracts with Irvine Regional Hospital, owned by Dallas-based Tenet Healthcare Corp., Anaheim Memorial Medical Center and Orange Coast Memorial Medical Center to handle overflow patients.

Kaiser will develop a national advertising campaign to fill jobs if necessary. It’s also looking at hiring traveling nurses who would sign one-year contracts.

Miller-Phipps said traveling nurses only would make up 15% of the facility’s nursing ranks, if that.

The health system is planning to train some of its existing nurses to work in the Sand Canyon hospital’s operating room.

The hospital will have a surgical unit and maternity center, and will meet earthquake standards set by the Office of Statewide Hospital Planning and Development. (See Healthcare special report for story on hospital expansions, page 77.)

The Sand Canyon parcel includes a four-story, 107,000-square-foot medical office building that’s been open for about two years.

Meanwhile, the outer skin of the hospital is expected to be finished within a month. Construction on the inside of the hospital, which will take longer, is set to start when the outside is done, Miller-Phipps said.

“We take possession of the building in late June or early July 2007, and expect to open in October 2007,” Miller-Phipps said.

Kaiser also is building a hospital support building that will house admissions and other functions.

That part of the complex, which has less stringent earthquake standards than the hospital building, is set to be finished by next spring.

Kaiser’s hospital will have two six-floor patient towers.

It is across the street from Irvine Regional Hospital and Medical Center at Sand Canyon Avenue and Alton Parkway.

Whiting-Turner Contracting Co., which has an Irvine office, is the project’s general contractor. Taylor and Associates AIA in Newport Beach is the architect.

Higher prices for steel have raised costs for the project by about 10%, the hospital said. Material cost increases, which began a couple of years ago, have affected buildings of all types going up.

Kaiser avoided a bigger hit because it acquired steel early on in the pricing boom, Miller-Phipps said.

Kaiser’s health plan is OC’s largest, with 372,000 local members, up from 190,000 in the early 1990s. The local growth spurred development of the Irvine hospital, Miller-Phipps said in a past interview.

Meanwhile, plans for another Kaiser hospital in OC are at an earlier stage.

Kaiser is set to replace its aging 200-bed hospital on Lakeview Avenue near the Riverside (91) Freeway in Anaheim with a 250-bed, $326 million facility. The proposed hospital is being designed.

Kaiser spent $14.5 million in 2001 for a 15.5-acre site in Anaheim from Canada’s Cinram International Inc., a compact disc replicator.

It later added land from Williamson Storage in assembling a 27-acre parcel for the project.

“As soon as the Irvine hospital’s finished, we’ll break ground,” Miller-Phipps said.

Kaiser’s Anaheim hospital is set to be finished by fall 2011, she said.

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