Hospitals across Orange County are expanding, adding patient towers and other facilities as part of a building boom.
Then there’s Kaiser Permanente.
It’s building a $350 million hospital and medical complex from scratch in Irvine, the first entirely new hospital built here since 1990.
Kaiser’s Sand Canyon Avenue hospital is 93% done and set to take its first patients in spring 2008.
By the Business Journal’s count, it’s the first hospital to open here since nearby Irvine Regional Hospital and Medical Center opened 17 years ago.
The Kaiser hospital is set to have 150 beds when it opens and room for another 100, putting it in the middle tier of hospitals here.
The campus also includes some 250,000 square feet of medical office space. One building already is open with another set for May.
The health plan sees Irvine as a model for developing hospitals, said Joseph Stasney, project director for Kaiser’s Orange County-Irvine Medical Center.
It’s the first Southern California hospital that’s part of Kaiser’s “template program,” Stasney said.
The health plan worked closely with the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development, California’s main hospital regulator, to speed the review and permit process, Stasney said.
Kaiser plans to use its experience building Orange County-Irvine Medical Center in other locations, he said.
For more on this story, see the March 5 edition of the Business Journal.
