New UCI hospital OKd
Regents approve spending $371 million to replace the aging medical center in Orange.
By MAYRAV SAAR
THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
The UC Board of Regents voted unanimously on Thursday to give UCI Medical Center the green light for its planned $371 million hospital.
A 221-bed, seven-story glass and brick structure will replace the 30-year-old gray-white building that had once served as the county hospital. The medical center's newer main hospital tower, with its 105 beds, will remain, as will the 84-bed neuro psychiatric center.
"We are all very excited about the UCI Medical Center. With its proximity to the biomedical industry, the hospital needs to be continually moving forward," UC Regent Joanne Kozberg said.
UC Irvine officials said they hope the new building project will go a long way toward the university's goal of establishing a first-rate education and research facility.
"We see ourselves now as the institution that provides highly specialized care to anyone in the region who is in need of the expertise of our faculty," said Dr. Ralph Cygan, CEO of UCI Medical Center.
Although the regents were expected to vote for the hospital's construction cost plans, local philanthropists called the decision "a celebration."
"I'm so excited about this," said Thomas Tierney, who along with his wife, Elizabeth, co-chairs the fund-raising campaign for the new hospital building. UCI has received $18 million of the $50 million that it hopes to get in private donations.
"This heralds the arrival of a brilliant new era of health care in Orange County," Tierney said. "There is no reason to ever leave Orange County" for specialty care.
A state law requiring hospitals to seismically upgrade is forcing medical centers throughout California to rebuild or renovate. In Orange County, the UCI project is one of several, including a $200 million project at Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian in Newport Beach and St. Joseph Hospital's $132 million patient-care center in Orange.
But UCI's campaign was part of a larger plan to shake its old image as a county hospital. Last year, the state set aside $600 million to seismically upgrade the five University of California hospitals, $235 million of which was dedicated to UCI.
The new medical center will feature a glass elevator shaft to rival the nearby Crystal Cathedral and private hospital rooms big enough to allow 12 residents to follow a doctor on her rounds.
Window seats in each room pull out into a bed for family members to stay with patients.
Thirteen new operating rooms will be built, including one robotic operating room and up to five "minimally invasive" operating rooms.
The new building will take the place of an old building deemed potentially unsafe in a major earthquake.
That building will be demolished in 2009 after construction is finished.
A second main Medical Center building will be retrofitted to improve its earthquake safety, officials said.
Altogether, the new UCI Medical Center would have 377 beds and room for 30 more later. It currently has 391 beds.
The project is slated to include road and parking enhancements, and a new emergency ambulance entrance.
Funding for the project would come from a variety of sources:
$235 million in lease/revenue bonds.
$62,920,000 in loans.
$5,509,000 from hospital reserves.
$20,791,000 in equipment leasing.
$47,500,000 from private donors.
To that end, donors and philanthropists are trying to get the word out about UCI Medical Center's new plans.
"We believe this will bring new academic medical services and the latest in high- tech and science discoveries to the county," said Timothy Strader, vice president of the Irvine Health Fund, which kicked off the industry campaign for the new hospital with a $1 million grant last year. "This is the kind of community facility that is long overdue in Orange County."
