COUNTYWIDE : Hospital Opening Delayed 5 Weeks
St. John’s Regional Medical Center will delay opening its new $70-million hospital in Oxnard for five weeks to allow completion of state inspections, a hospital official said Friday.
“It was a deliberate decision to put it off, it’s not that anything happened,” St. John’s spokeswoman Rita Schumacher said. “We’re just going through the approval process with (the state).”
Hospital officials had planned to open the 365,000-square-foot medical facility on Rose Avenue and Gonzales Road on Sept. 19. A new opening date has been scheduled for Oct. 24, Schumacher said. The total hospital relocation cost is set at $110 million.
In the next few weeks, the state Office of Statewide Planning and Development will be testing such items as fire alarm systems and evaluating the safety of new shelving and other equipment that is bolted into the walls, she said.
Formal permission to occupy the building will be granted through licensing by the state Department of Health Services, Licensing and Certification, Schumacher said.
St. John’s, one of 13 hospitals owned by the San Francisco-based Catholic Healthcare West, has been in Oxnard for 80 years.
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