Plans are moving forward to replace the old Stanford (CA) Hospital with a new one on the leading edge of innovation. The new facility will be designed to set the standard for safety and being flexible enough to accommodate yet-to-be-imagined medical technology. The planned seven-story hospital, costing about $2 billion, is scheduled to open in 2015 and will have 1.1 million square feet and add 144 beds. The new hospital is part of a larger renewal project at Stanford Medical Center that will modernize and expand Lucile Packard Children's Hospital, replace laboratories in the School of Medicine, and renovate the Hoover Pavilion for community health providers' office space.
The University of California is preparing to open two new medical schools to help train more physicians for underserved rural and minority communities. While the schools won't be open for four or five years, they are intended to help fill a growing shortage of physicians in the state, officials say. In addition to planning the new schools, UC is working to add slots at its existing medical schools in San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Davis, and Irvine, which now enroll about 2,540 students.
States, the federal government and private insurers are experimenting with paying primary-care doctors extra money to oversee and coordinate patients' care. The pay boost rewards doctors who reshape their practices to recreate an era when a trusted family physician helped patients through hospitalizations, coordinated specialist care, and provided routine screenings. The efforts may save money by reducing hospitalizations, ER visits, and disease. The "medical homes" concept is a modern twist on an idea first promoted in the 1960s.
Given the organization's recent troubles, the CEO job at Atlanta's Grady Memorial Hospital would appear to fall somewhere between unattractive and impossible, but industry experts said the slate of finalists is impressive. The winner will become the sixth leader of the Grady Health System in the past three years. The new head of Grady will face daunting challenges—the hospital's finance chief has projected a deficit of $18 million to $43 million this year. But all the candidates for the CEO job have dealt with some of the same problems that plague Grady, consultants say.
Three metro Atlanta hospitals have filed written appeals opposing an open heart surgery center approved for Lawrenceville, GA-based Gwinnett Medical Center. Gwinnett Medical Center cleared a major hurdle June 5 by gaining approval from the state Department of Community Health to start the open heart surgery center. However, the recent hospital opposition to the $32.9 million project places the project in limbo. Gwinnett Medical Center President and CEO Phil Wolfe issued a written statement saying he is "deeply disappointed" by the opposition.
Demand for care at Philadelphia's Fox Chase Cancer Center is up, and officials say the facility must grow soon. Its plans, estimated to cost $2 billion over 25 years, are mired in a years-long tussle with neighbors, so Fox Chase recently announced building a second campus in Delaware. Opposition is already surfacing there as a Delaware hospital with a big cancer program questions the use of state money to lure an outsider into its territory. While Fox Chase's ambitions stall, other hospitals are scrambling to attract the growing numbers of cancer patients in Philadelphia's highly competitive market.