Dr. Salick May Return to Westlake
The Salick Specialty Hospital that opened last year in the onetime Westlake Medical Center should not be affected by the recent decision to oust the firm’s namesake founder, except that it could bring a competing cancer center to the region, officials said.
Dr. Bernard Salick, unexpectedly booted last week by the British firm that purchased Salick Health Care Inc., is now eyeing the Westlake area as a potential site for one of many new cancer centers he hopes to open, his lawyer said Tuesday.
Determined to rebuild his empire of 24-hour outpatient cancer facilities, Dr. Salick will travel to New York and Europe this month to meet with investment bankers and international pharmaceutical firms in search of partners, said attorney Marshall Grossman.
“The Westlake area is going to be very high on his radar screen,” Grossman added.
Dr. Salick, who owns a ranch in Hidden Valley, has said in the past that a premier facility in Westlake could stem the tide of Ventura and Santa Barbara county residents traveling to Los Angeles to find quality cancer treatment.
He was unavailable for comment Tuesday.
Meanwhile, officials at the Zeneca Group--the British drug and chemical giant that last week purchased the half interest in the firm it didn’t already own--say nothing will change at the chain’s 11 cancer centers, seven breast centers and 10 outpatient dialysis centers.
“It really is status quo,” said Alan Milbauer, vice president of external affairs for Zeneca.
The Salick firm opened a cancer center in Westlake Medical Center in 1993 and last year bought the entire facility from Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corp.
The facility, which straddles the Los Angeles-Ventura county line, has since been renamed Salick Specialty Hospital and is Salick’s only stand-alone center. The rest are operated inside major hospitals, such as Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. The company also operates a breast center in the Westlake Village neighborhood of Thousand Oaks.
“We’re committed in the same way we’ve been committed to Westlake,” Zeneca’s Milbauer said.
The deal to buy Westlake Medical Center was not without controversy. Columbia, owner of nearby Los Robles hospital in Thousand Oaks, insisted on restricting the property so that Salick and any future owner could only treat cancer, immune-deficient, dialysis and organ-transplant patients.
Salick, under the personal direction of its founder, sued Columbia to expand uses for the hospital with an eye toward meeting public demand for an emergency room. A trial date has yet to be set. Milbauer said Zeneca will continue to pursue the litigation on its present course.
Zeneca acknowledges that the charismatic former chairman, who personally clinched the deals with hospitals across the nation, is free to compete with it. Industry analysts, however, have said it will be difficult for Dr. Salick to reenter the field he helped invent.
The proposal for another cancer center near the Salick Specialty Hospital and Los Robles’ offerings raises the question of how many cancer centers a relatively small community can sustain. In addition to the Salick center, UCLA’s Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center announced Monday that it is creating a network to link Ventura County doctors with its leading-edge facility.
Epidemiologist Kiumarss Nasseri of the Tri-County Regional Cancer Registry--which tracks cancer cases in Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties--said he knows of no pat formula for making such a determination.
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According to the most recent data, between 1988 and 1993, there were 16,780 cases of cancer in the three counties and 5,924 deaths caused by cancer.
Dr. Kyle Himsl, a urologist who has an office in the Salick Specialty Hospital, doesn’t count Dr. Salick out.
“He has been told, ‘You can’t do it, you can’t do it,’ and he has done it. . . . If physicians feel he can give the best care and he can do it in this economic marketplace, I think he can do it,” Himsl said.
For his part, Himsl is not worried about the change in management at Salick. While he has an office in the specialty hospital, he and the other doctors are not employed by Salick and pay fair market value for their space and access to the nursing staff. They also admit patients at other hospitals, including Los Robles.
“I don’t think any of us feel vulnerable,” he said.
