Growth in the Antelope Valley may have come to a crashing halt with the collapse of the mortgage market, but you would not know that from the plans that many health care organizations are making to build, expand and bring new services to the region. From Antelope Valley Hospital’s new comprehensive cancer center to Kaiser Permanente’s 100,000-square-foot specialty medical complex to a new $142 million county ambulatory care facility, construction crews will be busy for years to come. “There’s a great deal of excitement over the projects taking shape,” said Mel Layne, president of the Greater Antelope Valley Economic Alliance. “It will certainly help and add services that are needed here.” But don’t expect the new health care industry to look like the old one. The focus of most of these projects is preventative care and specialty services, not more inpatient beds. Neither will the new projects add significantly to job growth, observers say. The projects may, however, cut into admissions and revenues at San Fernando Valley hospitals and those in the heart of Los Angeles that have long drawn patients from the Antelope Valley. Some 492 patients traveled to Santa Clarita’s Henry Mayo Memorial Hospital for care in 2010 and more than 350 went to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, according to state statistics. While health care remains a dominant economic force — the third largest employer in the Antelope Valley with 8,200 workers — observers say the projects will generate, hundreds, not thousands of jobs as health care organizations figure out ways to deliver care that is both effective and cost efficient. Even as architects finalize the renderings and construction crews prepare to put dirt to shovel, the region’s largest hospital, Antelope Valley Hospital, saw a sharp drop in its census since the peak of the economy here in 2008-2009. “Our growth stopped two years ago,” said Antelope Valley Hospital CEO Edward Mirzabegian. The hospital’s average daily census has dropped 20 percent in that time period to 260, he said, due largely to a decline in elective procedures and the early impact of health care reform, the purpose of which has been to reduce hospitalizations. Kaiser’s new building in Lancaster, slated for construction this summer, will make space for up to 60 specialty physicians ranging from orthopedists to bariatric surgeons, and bring new services to the Antelope Valley that once necessitated a long journey into Santa Clarita, the San Fernando Valley or even further into the heart of Los Angeles. Kaiser’s membership has grown significantly in the Antelope Valley, and the new building will help meet the demand for services, said Barbara Zelinski, chief operating officer of Kaiser Permanente Antelope Valley. Since 2005, the organization has added 15,000 members in the Antelope Valley and is currently serving 100,000. By 2020, it expects to have 138,000 members. “We want to ensure that specialty services are provided in the community and minimize the need for travel,” Zelinski said. The new building will free up space for Kaiser’s growing cadre of primary care doctors. By 2020, Kaiser Permanente expects to add 40 new physicians to the 130 it already employs in the Antelope Valley. The innovative building design will take advantage of the high desert climate and be powered by sun and wind; it will have zero emissions. A nature trail surrounding the perimeter is designed to encourage Kaiser members to jog or walk, while exercise stations are geared toward helping them stay fit. A weekend farmers’ market and education about healthy eating aim to help ensure better diets — and hopefully better health outcomes at reduced cost. The whole point, said Zelinski, is to keep people healthy and out of the hospital. Kaiser bought enough land in Lancaster to one day build a new inpatient hospital in that city, but the fate of that project has yet to be determined and will hinge in part on the need for inpatient beds in the coming years. Projects catch up with population growth The county of Los Angeles also is adding more primary care services with its new High Desert Health System Multi-Service Ambulatory Care Center (MAAC). The new facility, which broke ground in January, will replace a much older campus located five miles out of town near a state prison complex. That campus is what was left of a 50-year-old county hospital which was shut down in 2003. “The key for us is to be able to consolidate all the services under one roof,” said Tim Moore, assistant administrator of the local facility. The existing campus has 19 buildings and patient services are distributed among seven to eight buildings, he said. “Patients have to walk back and forth to get what they need,” he added. The new building, roughly 142,000 square feet, will have room for multiple specialty services and primary care, as well as urgent care, radiation and laboratory space. It will have capacity enough for 45,000 patients and 125,000 visits a year, Moore said. “The Antelope Valley has been the fastest growing region in LA County,” Moore said. “We are finally seeing the health care system catching up with the population growth of the past decade.” Population growth is what got many of these projects on the drawing board. Attracted to the region by a building boom in inexpensive residential housing, the Antelope Valley’s population grew 21 percent to 482,017 between 2000 and 2011, according to the Alliance. While growth has certainly slowed, those who made the Antelope Valley their home haven’t gone anywhere, Layne said. They still need health care. That premise drove the opening in January 2011 of the Palmdale Regional Medical Center. The hospital opened with 121 beds, added 37 this year and expects to open all of the planned 249 beds in 18 months, provided the need is there, said Michael Cambron business development director. “We’re pretty sure we’re going to be able to open but we have to build the programs to attract the doctors and the patienets,” he said. Antelope Valley Hospital is devoting resources to specialty services rather than new inpatient beds. It plans to break ground this summer for a new comprehensive cancer center, which will offer residents a full range of services from chemotherapy to radiation and infusion therapy. Right now, Valley residents have to travel to the San Fernando Valley and beyond to receive cancer treatment. Rather than pay for the center out-of-pocket, however, Antelope Valley is undertaking the project with a prominent partner in cancer care that will bring specialists to the region. Much of the construction cost will be borne by a developer who will own the property. The partner will lease the building and Antelope Valley will reap the admissions driven by the new service. Mirzabegian said he expects the center to raise admissions by 25,000 patient visits a year, a 10 to 12 percent increase. “It will cost us very little,” said Mirzabegian. “I don’t have $20 million for a new building. We have to have partners to survive.” The creative approach to financing speaks to the complexities of the new health care business. Few health care companies today have the deep pockets of a Kaiser to build expensive new buildings. And few predict that the new buildings will generate thousands of jobs, though both Lancaster and Palmdale could use the shot in the arm. Lancaster’s unemployment rate was 15.2 percent in December, almost double what it was at the peak of the economic boom in 2007. Palmdale’s unemployment rate was 14.3 percent, more than twice the 2007 figure of 6.9 percent. At most, the projects will add a few hundred workers. “The new normal in the health care industry is efficiency,” Zelinski said. “The job growth will be different than it has been in the past as we get more efficient at what we do.”
Health Care’s Hot Spot
