Will Complement Other Improvements at Orange Facility : Cancer Center to Enhance Role of UCI Hospital

It was just one of hundreds of items in Gov. George Deukmejian’s proposed 1987-88 state budget, but to UCI Medical Center officials, the four-story cancer center represents improved cancer services, bolstering the medical center’s drive to be the county’s most specialized hospital.

The $11.5-million outpatient cancer center, part of a $40-million expansion and renovation of the medical center that began two years ago, is expected to open in about 2 1/2 years. The funds--$9 million for construction and the remainder for equipment and architectural fees--were included in the governor’s proposed 1987-88 spending document, which was unveiled Thursday.

Patients are expected to make a total of 40,000 visits a year to the 54,000-square-foot building to be located on the hospital grounds in Orange, doubling the current cancer caseload at the teaching hospital, according to Rosa Medina, administrator of the cancer center.

Ground breaking is set for the summer of 1988, and completion is expected in the fall of 1989, she said.

Two other Orange County hospitals also are adding cancer centers. Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian in Newport Beach plans to open a $15-million, 50,000-square-foot cancer center in 1988. St. Joseph Hospital in Orange is constructing a $6-million, 25,000-square-foot center that is expected to open later this year.

“We see our facility as not primarily caring for the routine cases but having an emphasis on the more complicated cases,” said Dr. Philip J. DiSaia, director of the UCI center and chairman of the medical school’s department of obstetrics and gynecology.

Patients are expected to be referred to UCI’s center from throughout the county and beyond because of the university’s access to the latest developments in cancer care and its involvement in research projects, he said.

“We feel that we represent the tertiary (highly specialized) care facility in the county,” DiSaia said. “Our role (in the community) will always be unique. Orange County will always have only one university teaching hospital . . . “and the role of the university is to create a center for the complicated and unique cases, as well as the routine.”

UCI’s cancer center will be equipped with a high-energy linear accelerator, a high-tech X-ray machine which will have the highest voltage of any such equipment in the county, DiSaia said. It will also have a low-energy linear accelerator and hyperthermia equipment for heat therapy, Medina said.

Although it is an ambulatory-care center, it will have two operating rooms for biopsies and other minor surgery. All major surgery will be performed in the hospital area of the medical center, officials said.

The cancer building will house gynecological, medical, pediatric and surgical oncology services, in addition to specialty services to deal with breast cancer, severe skin cancer, head and throat cancers and pain management.

Currently, UCI cancer services are scattered over the sprawling grounds of the medical center. Later this year, the cancer center will move into interim quarters in the outpatient building when it opens.

With cancer services decentralized, the oncologists are “scattered,” physically and professionally, DiSaia said. But the new center “will create a cohesive unit” that will catalyze relationships and stimulate interdisciplinary consultations, he said.

The expansion and renovation program at UCI’s hospital is designed to improve the former Orange County Medical Center in terms of both buildings and image. The hospital treats the bulk of the county’s indigent patients, and inadequate reimbursement from government health care plans for the poor contributed to a $10-million deficit at the hospital in 1984-85.

Last year, however, an influx of private patients and the imposition of cost controls allowed the hospital to break even. The university’s plan is to continue to lure additional paying patients by cultivating an image of state-of-the-art medical care provided in new and renovated surroundings.

In addition to the outpatient facility, which is expected to open in two phases beginning later this year, UCI is renovating its intensive care unit, an $8-million project. A $2.3-million building of private practice suites for UCI faculty opened last year. Also planned is a $17.6-million psychiatric facility.