Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian is doubling its presence in Huntington Beach, where it plans to provide “integrated care” through a mix of services.
The Newport Beach-based hospital is slated to open a 50,000-square-foot addition to its existing Hoag Health Center on Beach Boulevard in early April. The existing center is made up of another 50,000-square-foot health center that is primarily made up of doctors’ offices. It is being renovated in conjunction with the new center, and the two buildings will be joined via a walkway.
Hoag executives declined to reveal the cost of the project.
The addition “allows us to move toward what we call an integrated care center concept [in the Huntington Beach area], which is really bringing in all the needed specialties and primary care physicians and [bringing] them into one facility,” Hoag Chief Executive Robert Braithwaite said during a facility tour last week.
For example, the concept calls for capacity that would allow a patient to start with primary care and get other services on an as-needed basis.
“They’ve got their cardiologist here, they’ve got their gastroenterologist here, they’ve got their pediatrician here,” Braithwaite said. “All of it is in one platform.”
Some of the other services that will be available include medical imaging; oncology; a medical laboratory operated by Summit, N.J.-based Quest Diagnostics Inc.; rheumatology; obstetrics and gynecology; and breast care.
The hospital also operates the Hoag Orthopedic Institute in Irvine.
The expansion in Huntington Beach includes a pharmacy, parking structure with 456 stalls, urgent care center for after-hours conditions and a cafe.
“All of the support services kind of wrap around the full physician complement, so that, again, a patient doesn’t have to go anywhere but here,” Braithwaite said.
Hoag executives, prior to the expansion, put “a lot of thought into” what types of services Huntington Beach residents would consume and in what quantities today and going forward, he said.
“The challenge in healthcare right now is we need to be able to be flexible and adaptable, and so our planning around this structure was really to create an infrastructure shell, if you will,” said Sanford Smith, Hoag’s senior vice president of real estate, facilities, construction and operations.
Hoag’s infrastructure shell allows a variety of services to be placed in what Smith called a “pod structure” that allows the center to be organized around care teams that support doctors. Care teams include professionals, such as nurses, nurse practitioners and physician assistants.
The center’s design has a single point of check-in for patients; a brighter, more open design that features “surf colors” in homage to Huntington Beach; and other amenities “to really make the experience completely different” than traditional medical offices, Smith said.
“You’re not always coming here when you’re sick,” he said. “Rather than treating people like they’re sick, we’re trying to create a different kind of experience.”
Fully Wired
Hoag Huntington is fully wired and can accommodate technologies such as electronic medical records.
The building is being considered for LEED certification as a “green” facility.
Hoag has no plans for outpatient surgeries or inpatient beds in Huntington Beach. The city is primarily served by the 131-bed Huntington Beach Hospital, which is owned by Ontario-based Prime Healthcare Services.
“We don’t anticipate inpatient beds or hospital beds being on this campus,” Braithwaite said. “More and more of care is moving toward an outpatient basis.”
Covenant
Hoag’s decision to expand its Huntington Beach presence came before its decision to participate in Irvine-based Covenant Health Network. Covenant is a joint venture between Hoag and St. Joseph Health (see related story, page 3).
“The principles are exactly the same—that whole notion of [an] integrated continuum of care,” Braithwaite said. “That concept is here on a more micro, Huntington Beach platform versus an Orange County platform, which is what Covenant is.”
Hoag’s existing Huntington Beach health center has been around for some 20 years.
“We’ve had a footprint here with physicians in the community and their medical offices,” Braithwaite said. “We’ve had some ancillary services.”
Hoag is planning “plenty of outreach activities that are going to help educate and inform the Huntington Beach community” about the new center, according to Braithwaite.
“There’s already been a pent-up demand for Hoag and Hoag services in Huntington Beach,” he noted.
Irvine-based Hensel Phelps Construction Co. is the general contractor; Colorado Springs, Colo.-based HB&A is the construction manager. The Irvine office of Boulder, Colo.-based Boulder Associates is the building’s architect.
To view the original Orange County Business Journal? article, please click here.
To learn more, visit the Hoag Health Center Huntington Beach expansion page.
