MemorialCare Medical Group, a physician-based organization and a member of MemorialCare Health System in Fountain Valley, opened a new health center in Huntington Beach consolidating three smaller
offices and their services. The office, comprising primary, urgent and pediatric care, is in line with MemorialCare’s strategy on growing outpatient care.
“Huntington Beach is an important community for us [in terms of] patient population and a large number of employers we’ve worked closely with,” said MemorialCare Medical Center Foundation Chief Executive Dr. Mark Schafer. “We have a total of 34 MemorialCare [outpatient center] locations, and this [new office] is among the larger ones. We have a long-term lease on 25,000 square feet of space.”
MemorialCare Medical Group serves about 750,000 across its market, of whom 58,000 are in Huntington Beach and another 73,000 in surrounding cities.
MemorialCare Health System is a nonprofit comprised of six hospitals: Long Beach Memorial Medical Center, Miller Children’s & Women’s Hospital Long Beach, Community Hospital Long Beach, Orange Coast Memorial Medical Center in Fountain Valley and Saddleback Memorial Medical Center in Laguna Hills and San Clemente. It also has two medical groups, a health plan and other care centers. It employs 11,500 and works with about 2,600 physicians.
The new location at 17762 Beach Blvd. also offers imaging—including ultrasound, X-ray and MRI—and blood test services. Schafer said the combination of services offered at the facility are part of the “one-stop shopping patients look for.” The site has 11 board-certified physicians specializing in family medicine, internal medicine, pediatrics and urgent care. It will add a dialysis center in September, as well as more physicians.
“We built this facility with more space to add more physicians and their staff. We are looking to add four primary care physicians in the next two to four years,” Schafer said.
He noted that the Huntington Beach location, “all outpatient,” works closely with nearby Orange Coast Memorial—less than 10 minutes by car—to provide “seamless care” that includes both in- and outpatient care.
Schafer said MemorialCare doesn’t have a set of criteria that it uses when deciding where to build an outpatient facility. “It really depends on what’s needed in the community.” But it will consider locations where population has grown significantly.
Other outpatient sites are in Irvine, San Juan Capistrano, Fountain Valley and Long Beach. The Business Journal earlier reported that the MemorialCare Medical Group opened locations in March at Orange Coast Memorial and at the Douglas Park development in Long Beach—a 260-acre commercial, office and residential mixed-use property developed by Sares-Regis Group in Irvine. The locations, approximately 23,000 square feet each, offer new services geared toward women, including prenatal and gynecological care.
