Ensign Group Inc. is boosting its presence in several states.
The Mission Viejo-based company this month bought skilled nursing, assisted-living and independent-living properties in California, Arizona and Washington state.
Ensign provides rehabilitation, skilled nursing, home healthcare, assisted-living, and hospice care, among other things.
It bought 10 skilled nursing and assisted-living operations in Phoenix, Tucson, Prescott, Mesa, Scottsdale and Peoria that have 1,514 beds among them.
The Arizona buy “significantly strengthens our presence in several key healthcare markets within Arizona and adds to our ability to partner with hospital systems and managed care providers with post-acute [options] across the continuum of care,” said John Albrechtsen, president of Bandera Healthcare Inc., an Ensign subsidiary in Arizona.
The company bought the 162-bed Orchard Post-Acute Care Center in Whittier. Ensign said a subsidiary has operated Orchard since 2006 and that the lease on the land has a remaining 20-year term.
Ensign’s Washington state acquisition is Olympia Transitional Care and Rehabilitation, which has 125 beds.
The company now has 161 healthcare facilities, 13 hospice agencies, 14 home healthcare agencies, three home-care businesses and 17 urgent care clinics across California and 11 other states.
Startup Gets Into Patient Safety
A movement to end all preventable patient deaths in hospitals by 2020 is fueling companies of all stripes, including Newport Beach-based startup Kolkin Inc.
Kolkin makes software called SOS, which allows doctors to communicate over any Web browser and can run within a hospital’s private information technology network without requiring a third-party cloud.
SOS is designed to cut down on potential errors during patient handoff.
The Joint Commission, a Washington, D.C.-based accrediting body, has estimated that 80% of death-causing medical errors are associated with miscommunication in that process.
Dr. Auron Priestley, Kolkin’s founder and chief executive, said in an interview at Kolkin’s office near the Balboa Peninsula that he came up with the idea of SOS while he was in Arizona doing a general surgery residency.
Priestley decided to move back to California to start up Kolkin.
The company raised $1 million from angel investors to get started and is looking for more money, Priestley said.
“This is a hot market,” he said, adding that he is in a “courting process” with potential investors for a Series A venture fund.
SOS is in a “soft launch” to individual doctors and teams of doctors, as well as what Priestley described as a “very small group of institutions,” including academic medical centers of the University of Southern California and the University of California-San Francisco.
Priestley said he’s met with Joe Kiani, chief executive of Irvine-based patient monitor maker Masimo Corp. and a driving force behind the patient-safety movement.
Kolkin describes itself as a developer of “software for social good.”
Priestley said SOS could be used by doctors using “old legacy hardware” in parts of the developing world.
Aeolus Gets More Funding
Mission Viejo-based Aeolus Pharmaceuticals Inc. said it received $3 million in additional contract funding from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority.
Aeolus is developing AEOL 10150 as a medical countermeasure against chemical and radiological weapons, such as radiation exposure.
Its contract with the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority is worth up to $118 million and is designed to produce data necessary for the Food and Drug Administration to approve AEOL 10150 under its “animal rule,” which allows for clinical testing on animals when human trials aren’t feasible or ethical, and for a pre-emergency use authorization regulatory filing.
Bits & Pieces
Garden Grove-based Novoteris LLC said it received a $2.8 million award from the Bethesda, Md.-based Cystic Fibrosis Foundation Therapeutics Inc. to develop an inhaled nitric oxide antimicrobial drug for people with the lung disease who have airway bacterial colonization. Cystic Fibrosis Foundation Therapeutics is the nonprofit drug discovery and development affiliate of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, which is also headquartered in Bethesda.
