Report on Expansion Plan for Hospital OKd : Supervisors: Approval of environmental review for Ventura County Medical Center project comes with little public opposition.

Moving forward with plans to renovate and expand the Ventura County Medical Center, the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday approved the project’s environmental impact report.

The supervisors voted 5 to 0 to approve the plan, which calls for building a mental health hospital, general outpatient clinic, new medical examiner’s office, morgue and parking garage at the hospital complex on Loma Vista Road in Ventura.

Residents near the hospital had earlier lobbied against the expansion, saying it would create pollution and mar their ocean view. But the county apparently mollified the opposition by scaling down the garage and moving it away from residences.

Nearly all of the half-dozen speakers who addressed the board Tuesday supported the $47-million project, which county officials say could be financed mostly through state funds.

“It wasn’t exactly an accident that there were very few people here against the project,” Supervisor Susan K. Lacey told the board. “We’ve gone a long way toward making them happy.”

The expansion plan first came before the board in April. But after heated objections from residents on Agnus Drive, supervisors delayed action until the county conducted an environmental impact report.

County Public Works Director Arthur Goulet said that by moving the parking structure away from Agnus Drive, the complex would pose few problems to neighbors.

“It’s a project that is sorely needed,” Goulet said. “The facility is going to be beneficial to the entire community for a long time to come.”

The county will now apply to the state to pay for the outpatient unit and garage, which together will cost nearly $38 million.

About $9 million in state and county money has already been approved for the medical examiner’s office and the mental health hospital.

Phillipp K. Wessels, director of the county’s Health Care Agency, said he hopes to start construction of the medical examiner’s office within a few months.

Some of the old buildings used for outpatient care behind the county hospital have become so dilapidated that portions have been abandoned, he said. The structures will be torn down to make room for the new facilities.

“The medical examiner’s office is literally in a tin building,” Wessels said. “The family practice doctors see patients in a structure that is over 50 years old. We need simply to replace these buildings.”

A completed building plan is scheduled to go back to the board for approval by June. If the county obtains the state funding as planned, the outpatient center and parking garage will be completed within five years.

Wessels said that expanding the outpatient facility could help the hospital provide more care to Medi-Cal recipients, who make up 70% of patients. It could also save money by decreasing overnight stays of indigent patients, he said.

“The future of health care is going to be in the outpatient arena,” Wessels said. “It is going to be very important for us.”

Greg Thayer, a nurse at the medical center, told the supervisors that the county must improve its facilities.

“We just say rip the place down and rebuild it,” Thayer said.

Lanyard Dial, a hospital physician, added: “It’s cramped, and it’s falling down around us. The necessity of this building is without a doubt.”