Mission Hospital Regional Medical Center has joined sister facilities St. Joseph Hospital-Orange and St. Jude Medical Center in Fullerton in the construction race.
St. Louis-based McCar-thy Building Cos., which has a Newport Beach office, started work earlier this month on a $67 million, four-story, 95,000-square-foot critical care building for the Mission Viejo hospital.
Mission, Orange County’s fifth-largest hospital by patient revenue, expects to finish in spring 2009.
The tower will add 64 private rooms to Mission, which has 317 beds.
When the facility opens, it will include expanded trauma services, double the hospital’s surgical intensive care capacity, a neuroscience floor and updated diagnostic imaging services. A pedestrian bridge is being built to connect the new tower to Mission’s main facility.
Mission’s critical care tower is part of an ongoing, multiyear campus expansion effort. Besides the tower, the hospital is almost finished with a project to double the size of its emergency room and regional trauma center. It’s also finished a seven-level, 1,500-square-foot parking structure.
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Rendering of Mission building: 64 private rooms |
Mission is also planning to open a five-story medical office building that faces Crown Valley Parkway.
Unlike its sister facilities within Orange-based St. Joseph Health System, Mission Hospital is less driven by California’s earthquake law for its project. The hospital has relatively few seismic risks because most of its buildings were built to current standards roughly a decade ago.
Instead, Mission is expanding to serve South County’s growing population and to stay competitive with other hospitals.
The hospital said that it’s taking on a good portion of the project’s costs through funds from its operations and borrowing. Mission Hospital Foundation is raising other money through individuals, families and organizations.
Meanwhile, work continues on expansions for St. Joseph-Orange and St. Jude. St. Joseph’s expansion includes a 248,000-square-foot, 115-bed patient care tower, while St. Jude is putting up a 115,844-square-foot patient tower.
Investors Buy Big Alliance Stake
Alliance Imaging Inc., the Anaheim-based medical diagnostic service provider, said last week that a pair of investors bought a combined 49.7% stake in the company.
Funds managed by Oaktree Capital Management LLC of Los Angeles and New York-based MTS Health Investors LLC bought about 24.9 million shares of Alliance from Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. for $153.1 million.
When the deal’s complete, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, which had been Alliance’s majority shareholder for seven years, will own less than 3%. The deal’s scheduled to close July 1, subject to regulatory and lender approval.
Oaktree and MTS also agreed to what’s called a “standstill” arrangement, under which they aren’t allowed to raise their combined stake in Alliance above 49.9% without the consent of a majority of Alliance’s independent directors.
Clarient’s Eventful Week
Clarient Inc., an Aliso Viejo maker of cancer diagnostic equipment, saw its shares rise nearly 9% one day earlier this month, after it agreed to sell a pair of its product lines for $12.5 million to a U.S. unit of Germany’s Carl Zeiss AG.
Clarient agreed to sell its Acis and Trestle Instrument Systems and related intellectual property to Zeiss. The deal included consideration for each company to invest $3 million to develop genetic biomarkers and new applications for Acis, which is a digital microscope used by hospitals and drug developers.
Clarient acquired the product sold to Zeiss in September from from Trestle Holdings Inc. of Irvine.
Susquehanna Financial Group of suburban Philadelphia was Clarient’s financial adviser in the deal.
Drug Developer Goes Public
CNS Response Inc., a drug development company from Costa Mesa, has gone public via a reverse merger.
Reverse mergers are a way for small companies to go public without having to go through the process of holding an initial public offering by buying a public shell company.
CNS Response is trading on Nasdaq’s Over the Counter exchange under the symbol CNSO. It acquired Strativation Inc. of Irvine.
CNS Response is developing a neurophysic biomarker for treating psychiatric ailments.
The company also said it raised $7 million in a private placement.
