Tenet Healthcare Corp. has delayed plans to...

Tenet Healthcare Corp. has delayed plans to open a 24-hour urgent care center in Westlake Village this month because it is still hammering out details of its lease agreement, and officials now say the center’s opening could be one to two months away.

Meanwhile, Santa Barbara-based Tenet, the nation’s second largest hospital chain, is surveying local physicians about possibly opening a full-fledged hospital. Tenet has circulated questionnaires to about 300 doctors to ascertain whether there is a market for a second hospital in the area.

Tenet recently signed a letter of intent to lease space for its urgent care center at 917 Westlake Blvd., said Dr. Frank Gillingham, medical director for the future center. The center is intended to replace the emergency services lost when Westlake Medical Center was sold last July and converted into a cancer specialty hospital.

The 24-hour facility will be less than a full-fledged emergency room, which by law must be attached to a hospital. But with ultrasound and X-rays, Gillingham said it will offer more than your average urgent care center, sometimes begrudgingly referred to as doc-in-the-boxes. It most likely will not receive ambulances.

When Gillingham, who directed the emergency room at the former Westlake Medical Center, announced the new facility in January, he anticipated a March opening. Now, he said, it looks like it could be April.

Gillingham and partner, Dr. Douglas Vaughan, who has been tapped to run the future center’s workers’ compensation unit, will move their private practice this month into Tenet’s space, subleasing the 6,000-square-foot office until the urgent center opens.

“We’re still going forward,” Gillingham said, adding that his private practice will act as a “springboard” for the so-called Westlake Village 24-hour Medical Center. The facility is to function as a satellite of Tenet’s Encino-Tarzana Regional Medical Center.

The urgent care center’s future location is the current home of Salick Health Care Inc.’s Comprehensive Breast Center.

Salick officials declined to comment about where the breast center would be moving.

Currently, Columbia/HCA Healthcare Inc. enjoys a monopoly on hospital services in the Conejo/Las Virgenes area, with acute care centers in Thousand Oaks in the west and West Hills in the east.

Local physicians say they look forward to the competition that a second hospital would encourage.

“I respond favorably to quality competition, I respond favorably to choice,” said Dr. Brian Bashner, a Westlake Village orthopedist, who has returned his survey. “Without competition, you get mediocrity.”

Bashner added that should Tenet open a second hospital in the area, both it and Columbia’s facilities should rise to the occasion. “It will be good for both. You’ll get the best out of both companies.”

A Westlake-area pediatrician, who asked that his name not be used, said the area could support two hospitals, though he acknowledged that he had not yet returned his survey. “I do believe there is a need for a second hospital. This area is a growing neighborhood.”

Stephanie McDermott, a local resident who has campaigned for the entry of another hospital provider in the Conejo Valley, said she met last week with an official from Tenet, along with two area doctors. She was told about 75 doctors have returned their surveys.

The questionnaire itself, she said, is rather benign, asking physicians to describe their practice, their billing, their relationships with insurance companies and the types of hospital facilities their patients need.

A Tenet spokeswoman acknowledged the surveys but declined to say what the results have found so far.

“We’re still working through the process to see what the need is,” said spokeswoman Joan Galvan, adding that Westlake Village is an important community to Tenet.