Mission Hospital, which is comprised of a campus in Mission Viejo and Laguna Beach, is getting new leadership.
Chief Executive Tarek Salaway will be leaving the organization next month.
“This was a decision he didn’t make lightly—ultimately he has chosen to return to the Bay Area with family,” according to a hospital spokesperson.
Eileen Haubl, Mission Hospital vice president and chief financial officer has been named interim chief executive.
Under Tarek’s leadership, Mission Hospital recently launched its birth center and midwifery program, broke ground on a new outpatient cancer center and created an After-School Program Intervention and Resiliency Education mental health and wellness program.
The three midwifery birthing suites, launched in May at Mission Hospital Mission Viejo, were designed to provide expectant mothers the option to be delivered by midwives. It’s the second hospital in the state to offer an in-hospital birthing center.
That location is also building a new four-story, 104,500-square-foot cancer center at the Shops at Mission Viejo, a Simon Property Group Inc.-owned (NYSE: SPG) regional mall comprised of 150 stores and restaurants, including Nordstrom, H&M, and Cheesecake Factory. Construction began in January last year.
The center, named after lead donors Judi and William “Bill” Leonard, is slated to open this year.
The 523-bed regional medical center and its 189-bed sister hospital are part of Renton, Wash.-based Providence St. Joseph Health’s network of 14 hospitals in Southern California.
Haubl, responsible for managing all aspects of Mission Hospital’s financial, budgetary and accounting functions across both campuses, also led the charge when it came to the real estate venture for the construction of the new cancer center—it’s a 50-50 joint venture between Mission Hospital and senior housing-focused real estate investment trust Welltower Inc. (NYSE: HCN).
Alzheimer’s
UCI MIND, the University of California-Irvine’s Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, raised $370,000 at its 9th annual gala held at Balboa Bay Resort in Newport Beach last month, a record for the organization. Proceeds will be used to support Alzheimer’s research.
The center is one of 32 Alzheimer’s disease research centers funded by the National Institute on Aging, a department under the National Institute of Health, and one of 10 funded by the California Department of Public Health.
It’s spearheading a study on the correlation between Down syndrome and Alzheimer’s disease, with the intent to improve understanding of brain aging and dementia in Down syndrome.
Dr. Ira Lott, leading the study, said the connection between the two diseases goes back to the 1940s.
People with Down syndrome are born with an extra copy of chromosome 21, which carries the APP gene.
This gene produces a protein called amyloid precursor protein; too much of that protein leads to a buildup of protein clumps called beta-amyloid plaques that cause problems on how brain cells function and increases the risk of developing Alzheimer’s dementia.
Almost all people with Down syndrome develop these plaques by age 40, according to NIH.
“They [Down syndrome patients] don’t’ always develop dementia, there’s an incremental increase [of the risk] with age, but the prevalence of dementia [among this group] is much higher than the typical population,” he said.
Lott, professor and chair of pediatrics at UCI’s school of medicine, said the study is in its third year.
The university also recruited Dr. Liz Head from the University of Kentucky in November to be part of Lott’s study.
More information on UCI MIND’s research projects are available via UCI C2C Registry’s website.
Bits & Pieces
KPC Group named Dr. Sumanta Chaudhuri as chief medical officer of Hemet Valley Medical Center and Menifee Valley Medical Center. KPC owns a network of seven hospitals in Southern California, including four based in OC that are part of Santa Ana-based KPC Healthcare Inc. … Torrance-based Honda Motor Co. donated $50,000 to Children’s Hospital of Orange County and the Pediatric Brain Tumor Foundation, a nonprofit solely dedicated to children and teens with brain tumors. … UCI Health, the academic medical center of University of California-Irvine, was recently awarded Five-Star Hospital ranking from the Patient Safety Movement for implementing 29 evidence-based Actionable Patient Safety Solutions processes. More than 4,600 hospitals in 44 countries have implemented the processes, according to the foundation. The nonprofit, founded by Masimo Corp. Chief Executive Joe Kiani, embraces the mission of eliminating preventable patient deaths in hospitals.
