Hospital’s $50-Million Make-Over Underway

As its onetime rival down the street prepares to double in size, Ventura County health officials have begun $50 million in upgrades and earthquake renovations at the county’s public hospital.

The Ventura County Medical Center, constituting several buildings in midtown Ventura, sorely needs a make-over, especially on a 1954 building that houses neonatal intensive care, pediatrics and some obstetrics and surgery beds, hospital director Mike Powers said.

But the work, needed in part to meet strict new earthquake safety standards by 2008, will not include an expansion, county officials said.

Several private hospitals in the county -- including Community Memorial two blocks away, Los Robles Regional Medical Center in Thousand Oaks and Simi Valley Hospital -- recently announced retrofitting plans that include expansions. The Community Memorial and Los Robles projects will cost about $120 million each, the new Simi Valley wing about $35 million.

At Ventura County Medical Center, construction began five months ago on a new kitchen, cafeteria and laboratory building, scheduled to be completed in two years. The current kitchen and cafeteria are in a modular building that will be razed, and the laboratory will be moved from the old administration building, Powers said.

About $8 million of the $14-million cost is being paid by a state grant awarded in 1994 to hospitals that receive a disproportionate share of low-income patients. County taxpayers will foot the remainder. The $36-million seismic upgrade is in the planning stages, but most of the work will be limited to the 48-year-old building, Powers said.

Two other structures -- one housing the inpatient psychiatric unit and the other containing the emergency room, intensive care and obstetrics and gynecology -- are in good shape and will require little work, Powers said.

The oldest building on the site was erected in 1920. Since it will be used only for administrative and support staff offices, and not for patients, it does not fall under the stringent new state rules.

Although financing still has to be worked out, Powers said he expects the design and bidding process to be completed by 2005 and construction to begin in 2006. A state law passed after the 1994 Northridge earthquake requires all California hospitals to meet strict standards by 2008 to prevent their buildings from collapsing during earthquakes.

According to hospital industry projections, about half of the state’s 2,700 medical buildings at 450 sites have to be reinforced or rebuilt at a cost of about $10 billion to meet the state requirements.

But with many hospitals scraping by financially, they may not be able to borrow the millions of dollars needed for upgrades. Powers said he does not believe that will be a problem for the county hospital, despite the fact it loses millions of dollars a year on operations.

Powers said the Board of Supervisors could elect to pay for the project by issuing tax-exempt certificates of participation, which are similar to bonds for long-term financing.

The hospital’s $145-million annual operating budget could handle paying back a loan at a rate of about $2 million a year, Powers said.

The county also may be able to buy time by taking advantage of an exception that extends the state’s deadline to 2013 if some seismic work on a substandard building has begun, Powers said.

And with so many public hospitals in California scrambling for funding, the state may decide to extend the deadline for everyone as the Legislature struggles with its own budget crisis, Powers said.