South County is looking at a lot more hospital space,and medical workers,come 2007.
That’s when construction on Kaiser Permanente’s $260 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.
For more on this story, see the August 14 issue of the Business Journal.
