With the original Jan. 1 deadline looming for all California general care hospitals to be more earthquake safe, developers are busy constructing medical buildings in spite of high construction costs.
The Orange Coast Memorial Medical Center in Fountain Valley is set to be one of the latest to jump into that building boom,but not because of any state mandate.
Orange Coast is putting up a $48 million, six-story building for outpatient services, which isn’t required to update its seismic safety.
Orange Coast, one of three local hospitals owned by Long Beach-based Memorial Health Services, will start work on the tower Nov. 1, said Marcia Manker, the hospital’s chief executive. The building is set to be finished in spring 2009.
Orange Coast is adding the 162,500-square-foot center to stay with the changing trends of healthcare delivery, Manker said.
“We were built just as an inpatient hospital,” she said. “With all the new technology, there’s just been a huge increase in the volumes we’re seeing on the outpatient services.”
Oncology, cardiology, neurology, medical imaging, orthopedics, an outpatient surgery center, rehabilitation services, a pharmacy, laboratory and medical offices are going to be part of the building. Technological upgrades are also part of the project, including electronic medical records, Manker said.
The outpatient building will allow Orange Coast to free up some space for inpatient services, she said. Orange Coast has 224 patient beds.
The expansion is being paid for through internal funds and through some fundraising efforts, Manker said. Memorial is a not-for- profit hospital operator.
Summit Smith Healthcare Facilities, a design-build firm out of Milwaukee, is the project’s developer. The center is being built on the site of older medical office buildings, which are being demolished.
Orange Coast originally belonged to FHP International Corp. and served only members of that health plan. In 1996, Memorial, which also owns Saddleback Memorial Medical Center in Laguna Hills and Anaheim Memorial Medical Center, bought Orange Coast for $87 million.
Memorial is trying to sell off Anaheim Memorial. A proposed $55 million deal to sell it to Prime Healthcare Services Inc., which owns three hospitals in OC, was blocked by Attorney General Jerry Brown’s office in July for being “inconsistent with public interest.” It would have changed the not-for-profit hospital into a for-profit business. Memorial has reopened bidding to find another buyer.
Memorial also encountered some resistance with its expansion plans for Orange Coast.
Fountain Valley’s Planning Commission originally blocked the plans in a 3-2 vote because of traffic concerns. The City Council overturned the decision earlier this month.
The Planning Commission’s original veto of the project caught many by surprise because of the widespread building boom in area hospitals.
St. Joseph Hospital-Orange is finishing up work on its $203 million patient care center, which is set to take its first patients on Oct. 14. St. Joseph-Orange’s 248,000-square-foot center has 150 beds and is designed with the Hispanic population in mind, which makes up 50% to 55% of its patient market.
Unlike Orange Coast, St. Joseph-Orange started its expansion as a way to meet California’s seismic safety law, which requires all major hospitals in the state to remain standing 72 hours after a major earthquake.
And construction continues on what the University of California, Irvine Medical Center calls its “New University Hospital.” That hospital, which has 480,000 square feet of space and costs $371 million, is scheduled to open in spring 2009.
