Barbara Zelinski was prepared for the worst when it came to moving Kaiser Permanente’s Panorama City Medical Center lock, stock and every bed-bound patient to a new, earthquake-resistant building last week.
On March 25, patients were transported to the new 218-bed building next door via wheelchairs, gurneys and even in their own hospital beds. The 400,000-square-foot building is nearly twice the size of the old building, which will be demolished.
Around 200 workers who normally would have had the day off came in to help. Portable life-support equipment was strategically placed along the corridors in case any of the 96 patients had a cardiac arrest en route. Nurses in both building communicated by radio to coordinate the movement, and vendors were on hand in case new equipment malfunctioned.
“It was like carrying an umbrella to ensure it wouldn’t rain,” said Zelinski, a hospital administrator who noted that the transfers went smoothly.
Zelinski and other administrators had been planning for the move ever since ground broke in December 2003 on the new facility, located on a former parking lot. Around $2 million from the facility’s $280 million budget was set aside for transition activities.
The new Panorama City hospital, designed by Los Angeles-based Co Architects, is the second of 11 Kaiser Permanente facilities to open in Southern California over the next five years.
It’s also considered the first full-service hospital complex to open in the San Fernando Valley in 14 years.
Kaiser is spending $4 billion on its construction program, by far the largest such program in Southern California.
Employee Wellness Outreach
Huntington Hospital’s investment in making itself a go-to provider of employee wellness programs in the Pasadena area is beginning to pay off.
Using the services of Nashville, Tenn.-based consultant Aegis Health Group, Huntington last summer began offering a variety of wellness services for more than 50 businesses, ranging providing from information kiosks in break rooms to on-site health assessments for workers, said Sheryl Rudie, the hospital’s director of business development.
Participating hospitals pay Aegis a monthly fee to help administer the program, and provide most of the services to the businesses and their employees for free. The idea is that employees will seek future medical services at the hospital.
“Many employers see hospitals as part of the problem in rising health care costs, but we are encouraging our hospital clients to take a leadership role in helping companies control their costs by having healthier workers,” said Aegis Chief Executive Henry Ross.
Huntington is the first Los Angeles County hospital to use the services of Aegis, which also is consulting with several Orange County hospitals, Ross said.
Cogent Inc., a South Pasadena developer of automated fingerprint identification systems, learned high blood pressure was a common problem of its hard-working engineers after Huntington conducted an on-site health fair last fall.
The service provided Cogent with an aggregate report of overall employee health, while the employees received specific reports in the mail prompting many to seek care.
“With the hospital just down the street from our office this was a logical partnership for us,” said Sherry Stockland, the company’s human resources administrator. “Our people feel grateful for finding out about problems they may have had.”
Making Index’s Cut
HCP Inc. joins the Standard & Poor’s 500 index Monday, and issued a bunch of new shares to celebrate sort of.
The Long Beach-based health care real estate investment trust agreed to sell 12.5 million shares to several index mutual funds based on the S & P; 500. The funds are required to own broad swaths of companies in the stock market index. Seeking to ensure the move to the index would not artificially drive up HCP’s stock price, the REIT newly issued the shares.
The company did not state how much of a dilutive effect the transaction would have on shareholders, but the issuance would represent only 5.7 percent of the company’s 217 million outstanding shares.
In a separate transaction, HCP priced the sale of 4.5 million shares to an institutional investor at $33.32 each, equal to the stock’s closing price March 25. The company plans to use proceeds from the two offerings to repay debt.
Earlier this month, HCP agreed to sell a $371 million portfolio of health care facilities to Medical Properties Trust Inc., a Birmingham, Ala., REIT. The 21 facilities include seven unidentified acute care hospitals, five inpatient rehabilitation hospitals, three long-term acute care hospitals and six wellness centers.
Staff reporter Deborah Crowe can be reached at
[email protected]
or at (323) 549-5225, ext. 232.
