UCI Faculty Again Calls for On-Campus Hospital Facility

UC Irvine’s faculty leaders have said once again that they want a hospital on the university campus, but a vote this week in favor of the idea merely endorses a long-range plan that has existed for years, campus spokesmen said.

Having a hospital on campus has been on the faculty’s wish list for a long time, and the Academic Senate’s vote Wednesday night reaffirmed that, authorities said. But all stressed that there are no concrete proposals to build anything on the Irvine campus, and no one is talking about reviving one of the biggest battles in Orange County history.

In the 1980s, UCI and some Irvine residents battled People of Irvine for a Community Hospital, a residents’ group backed by the Irvine Co., for the right to build a hospital in the city. UCI withdrew its proposal and offered to work with PICH in 1983, resulting in the 177-bed Irvine Medical Center (IMC) now under construction on land provided by the Irvine Co. The hospital is expected to open in the fall.

The vote by the faculty senate Wednesday endorsed part of a general plan for development throughout the UCI campus by the year 2005, according to Linda Granell, a university spokeswoman. That plan calls for 400 “inpatient beds . . . not necessarily a hospital” for highly specialized care, she said.

UCI’s long-range development plan, including the 400 beds, has existed in draft form since about 1980 and was known even when UCI was negotiating with the victorious IMC representatives, Granell said.

But Dr. Hoda Anton-Culver, chairwoman of the faculty committee that studied the on-campus hospital concept, sounded more urgent about building it. The faculty needs such a hospital because increasing traffic and the distance between the Irvine campus and the UCI Medical Center in Orange are impeding medical education and research, she said Thursday.

The hospital in Orange would remain, authorities said.

“We do need a clinical facility very badly,” she said. “It’s very difficult in Orange, with the traffic situation. You spend most of your time on the freeway. . . . There is a big need for more research and education, and the only way we can do that is to have it (a facility) right here on campus, so that we have the basic clinical and science people together.”

Currently, she said, first- and second-year medical students remain on the Irvine campus, “so there is no opportunity to be exposed to clinical work.” Conversely, third- and fourth-year students spend most of their time at the hospital in Orange and “have little time on campus,” she explained.

The situation also affects research and the physician faculty, she said. “Clinical research is suffering because scientists in research (at UCI) don’t get a hold of the appropriate clinical material, which is available in Orange. . . . The distance is just too great.”

An on-campus facility would have to be approved by not only UCI’s administrators but also the University of California regents and Irvine city officials. No efforts have yet been made to seek any of that approval, Anton-Culver said. Further, there are no drawings, and financing has not been discussed.

Similarly, the faculty group has not met with Irvine Medical Center representatives or community leaders about the group’s desire for an on-campus hospital, she said.

“All that will go through the channels . . . this is really just a first step,” she said.

“I’m only an academician. I’m nothing else,” she said. “I’m only concerned with the academic excellence of this college.”

Spokeswoman Granell would not call the on-campus facility in the proposal a hospital. She said the long-range development plan voted on by the medical faculty group calls for 400 beds on campus for “highly specialized” care, such as for cancer, neuromuscular diseases or diabetes, she said.

“This is not a ‘hospital.’ It is not in any way in competition with a general-care hospital,” she stressed.

“This has been part of the plan for the College of Medicine for the entire time of the 1980s, and during all discussions with IMC, it has always been clear that we would plan to have inpatient facilities on campus in a highly specialized manner,” Granell said.

Stanley van den Noort, the former medical school dean who was ousted after his fight for the on-campus hospital plan crumbled, said of the Academic Senate vote: “The faculty have been in favor of that for 25 years.” He said that in the past year there has been a “softening of position” by those who decided against the earlier campus hospital plan. “Now, there’s some thought that it was a pretty good idea,” van den Noort said.

Gary Hunt, chairman of the Irvine Medical Center’s board of directors, said he was not alarmed by the faculty group’s vote. The private hospital under construction is not threatened, he said.

“There has always been, as far as I know at UCI, long-range planning to determine the feasibility of an on-campus hospital,” Hunt said.

“Any time you envision the creation of a great university, which UCI is on the road towards being and in many ways already is, and you have a medical school associated with it, you have to take into consideration and planning an on-campus hospital facility. I anticipate they’ll be thinking about it 10 years from now, 20 years from now.”

Granell said the university’s long-range plan is still in draft form and must undergo an environmental impact review and public hearing before it can be adopted and sent to University of California headquarters in Berkeley.

Dr. Walter Henry, who Thursday was named vice chancellor of health sciences and dean of the college of medicine at UCI, said he has not decided whether the university should build its own hospital on campus.

“What I am committed to do with the chancellor and the medical center director is to develop a strategic plan,” Henry said in a telephone interview from Chicago, where he will attend a medical conference today. “As part of the strategic plan, we will look at an on-campus facility and whether that would be feasible.”

UCI Chancellor Jack W. Peltason named a staff cardiologist to be dean of the university’s medical school. Story, Part I, Page 1.