Kaiser Permanente is about to open a new hospital in Irvine,the first built from scratch here since 1990. But that’s only the half of it.
Oakland-based Kaiser, the county’s largest health plan operator, soon plans to start work on a 250-bed, $326 million hospital in Anaheim.
Kaiser first plans to build a four-story, 117,000-square-foot medical office building on the Anaheim site along the Riverside (91) Freeway.
The medical office building, under construction now, is set to open next year and offer primary and specialty medical care as well as a pharmacy and laboratory.
The hospital, slated to open in early 2013, is set to replace Kaiser’s aging facility on Lakeview Avenue. It’s been around since the mid-1970s.
“I feel like I’m in the construction business,” said Julie Miller-Phipps, Kaiser’s vice president and OC service area manager. “I should have taken blueprint reading when I was in my graduate program.”
The Anaheim hospital is being built as part of Kaiser’s “template program,” which it developed in connection with the Office of Statewide Hospital Planning and Development, California’s hospital regulator, to speed the permit and review process for its new hospitals.
Kaiser’s plan “allows a shorter design and permitting period,” said John Gillengarten, deputy director of OSHPD’s facilities development division.
“It’s the same basic design, but they can modify it to local conditions,” Gillengarten said. “It cuts down our review time, because we will have looked at it once or twice.”
Kaiser has started evaluating what to do with its Lakeview hospital, Miller-Phipps said. It could tear down the building and replace it with medical offices, keep it for basic care operations or possibly sell it off, she said.
“The land is actually worth a considerable amount of money,” she said.
Next month, Kaiser is set to open the centerpiece of its $400 million complex in the Irvine Spectrum,a hospital on Sand Canyon Avenue.
Kaiser-Sand Canyon is the first entirely new hospital built in Orange County since nearby Irvine Regional Hospital and Medical Center opened 18 years ago.
The hospital is set to open with about 1,000 non-doctor workers. It’ll have 100 doctors affiliated with it.
Kaiser’s doctors are employed by a medical group affiliated with the health system.
Kaiser-Sand Canyon is set to have 150 beds when it opens and has room for another 100, which would put it in the middle of local hospitals. Miller-Phipps said she expects an average of 96 patients per day.
About 150 of Kaiser’s Anaheim hospital employees have transferred to the Irvine campus. About two-thirds of the employees are new hires who came from a mix of regional hospitals.
For now, Kaiser has some 30 patients a day housed at Irvine Regional Hospital.
Kaiser doesn’t expect to have patients there once its Irvine hospital opens but plans to keep overflow contracts with Irvine Regional Hospital, Miller-Phipps said.
There’s about 250,000 square feet of medical office space up and running at Kaiser’s Irvine campus.
One Hospital, Two Campuses
The Anaheim and Irvine hospitals are set to operate under a single state license, according to Miller-Phipps.
“So if you look at it, it really ends up being 350 beds just in two campuses,” she said.
Kaiser decided to build Sand Canyon because it was growing members in the southwest part of the county for some time, according to Miller-Phipps.
Kaiser has 385,000 local members. Its local enrollment has more than doubled from 190,000 in the early 1990s.
“We’ve worked very hard to build up the reputation of the organization in the county,” Miller-Phipps said.
Santa Ana’s Advanced Medical Optics Inc. is one of Kaiser’s local clients.
“Once we get access to a group and start to build a rapport and a good relationship with the members, then that word spreads,” Miller-Phipps said.
The new hospital should help Kaiser’s South County growth, she said.
“Our penetration in the south part of the county is lower than the north part,” Miller-Phipps said. “For us, that means we have a lot of room to grow quickly.”
Kaiser projects about 286,000 North County members in 2009.
