Expansion plan by hospital OKd

The University of California Board of Regents has approved an ambitious proposal to dramatically expand a new hospital set to open next year at UCI Medical Center in Orange, officials said Thursday.

The $242-million expansion plan, expected to be completed in 2011, calls for, among other things, additional operating rooms and patient beds, a seventh-floor cancer unit, a radiology suite in the basement, a new four-story clinical laboratory building, an outdoor garden and a 60-foot, glass-covered patient entrance.