Irvine-based patient monitor maker Masimo Corp. is the latest company to get on the St. Joseph Hoag Health wellness wagon.
Masimo and St. Joseph Hoag, a regional healthcare delivery company also based in Irvine, opened a wellness center late last month at Masimo’s Discovery Drive headquarters building offering wellness services. It plans to add medical services in October.
About 550 Masimo workers will be served by the walk-in center, which offers services ranging from health coaching, education, and screenings to on-site laboratory draws and flu shots. It also contains a telehealth element that St. Joseph Hoag Health, which manages the center, says will allow for primary episodic healthcare.
The wellness center is an outgrowth of relationships Masimo has had with several St. Joseph Hoag Health and Hoag leaders, including St. Joseph Hoag boss Richard Afable, Chief Executive Joe Kiani said.
“I’ve admired how creative they were when they bought Hoag Irvine and came up with this new model to do some work [in] empowering clinicians and letting them have a piece of the pie,” he said in an interview.
The planning process took about 18 months. It was part of the remodel of the Discovery Drive building into Masimo’s new corporate headquarters, according to Annette Walker, executive vice president of strategic services with Irvine-based St. Joseph Health, one of St. Joseph Hoag’s partners. The property is a popular filming location known as “Globo Gym” in the film “Dodgeball” and as Stark Industries’ headquarters in “The Iron Man” series.
Walker said the center fits in with a St. Joseph Hoag goal.
“We’re really committed to bringing healthcare to where people live, work and play,” Walker said, adding that Masimo sees “a tremendous amount of value in their employees being able to access these services at the work site.”
St. Joseph Hoag is working on the design of on-site wellness centers with three other Orange County employers, Walker said, adding that she couldn’t name those businesses.
“We want to work with each employer to say, ‘OK, what’s your population? What would you like to accomplish on the site, and how can we fit your expectations?’ ” Walker said.
St. Joseph Hoag’s partners—St. Joseph Health and Newport Beach-based Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian—have other ties to Masimo and Kiani. They belong to the Patient Safety Movement, which is a Kiani brainchild that aims to eliminate preventable patient deaths in hospitals by the year 2020.
St. Joseph Hoag Health operates four other wellness centers in Irvine. Two are at properties owned by Newport Beach-based developer Irvine Company—the Jamboree Center office complex and the Village and Park apartment developments in the Irvine Spectrum. The third is at the Park Place corporate office of St. Joseph Health, and the fourth opened in late July at the headquarters of storage products maker Western Digital Corp.
Nursing Home Auction Arranged
Anaheim-based JCH Senior Housing Group oversaw a recent bankruptcy court auction of 19 Southern California healthcare facilities that are subsidiaries of Los Angeles-based Country Villa Health Services for $65 billion.
Shlomo Rechnitz, owner of Los Angeles-based Brius & Rockport Services, won the auction, although his bid was lower than a $73 billion bid submitted jointly by Covenant Care in Aliso Viejo and Oakland-based Kaiser Permanente that was rejected by bankruptcy court Judge Catherine Bauer because it didn’t comply with certain rules.
Country Villa filed for bankruptcy in March 2014 after a series of class-action lawsuits against it.
Bits & Pieces
Irvine-based PhageTech LLC said UCI Medical Center in Orange approved a clinical research project that will study its biosensor device to detect recurrent bladder cancer in post-treatment patients. … Staar Surgical Co., a Monrovia-based ophthalmic device maker with manufacturing in Aliso Viejo, said it appointed William Wall to its board of directors. The company also said Charles Slacik, former chief financial officer of Beckman Coulter Inc., which is now part of Washington, D.C.-based Danaher Corp., retired as a director. Slacik had been with Staar since September 2012.
