Almost three years after Saint Louise Hospital left town and the
medical office building emptied of doctors and laboratories, and
after a few earnest but false starts, the medical facility has a
real chance at new life. It also has a new name: DePaul Health
Center.
Almost three years after Saint Louise Hospital left town and the medical office building emptied of doctors and laboratories, and after a few earnest but false starts, the medical facility has a real chance at new life. It also has a new name: DePaul Health Center.
A team from O’Connor Hospital, headed by Joanne Allen, a senior vice president, told the City Council Wednesday that the medical office building (MOB) will soon be almost bursting at the seams.
O’Connor is also actively looking for partners to provide medical services in the main hospital building – short of a full acute-care hospital – and talking to urgent care centers and developers who want to build a 100-bed assisted living center next door to the hospital.
“I can’t tell you how exciting this is,” said Mayor Dennis Kennedy. “I am very pleased.”
The O’Connor team was introduced by Joe Mueller of the Morgan Hill Community Health Foundation.
“This is a validation of the commitment that the City Council and the citizens have made by contributing to the foundation, keeping the facility usable as a medical facility,” Mueller said.
O’Connor took over responsibility for the center from Saint Louise Regional Hospital in Gilroy – they both are Daughters of Charity hospitals – in July because it had greater staffing and financial resources available to revive medical services in the buildings.
Allen’s presentation came as a surprise to the public but not to Kennedy and Councilwoman Hedy Chang nor to the MHCHF, all of whom have worked diligently behind the scenes to repair the torn fabric of local health services.
“Joanne met with Hedy and me and with the health foundation,” Kennedy said, “and at each meeting she added a little more to the plans.”
Allen’s presentation focused on four aspects of the site. The MOB was reopened in August 2002 and limped along with very minor use. Now, she said, O’Connor is signing leases with physicians and they are moving in.
“We expect to be fully leased by July 2004,” Allen said, “which means 90 percent occupancy.” She said Dr. Brian Joyce wants to move into the MOB from The Villas, portables on the site where he has his office. The physical therapy group, Fritter and Schultz will move in before the end of the year, and O’Connor is completing discussions with nine interested physicians plus two who are about to move from Kentucky.
“We are looking at a strong primary-care base with selected specialists,” Allen said. She said it was possible for several physicians to time-share in one office suite if they will only be on site one or two days a week.
“We are also looking for physicians for an urgent care facility,” she said. “We are actually looking at running out of space.” she said.
Laboratory services and basic radiology should be installed within six months.
While the South Valley is not large enough to need a second full acute-care hospital, Allen said O’Connor is working on renovating the main hospital building and is actively looking for partners in adjacent services, including the Lucile Packard Center at Stanford Children’s Hospital, children’s hospitals in Oakland and Fresno and Kaiser Permanente for behavioral services.
“We are excited about bringing pediatric services to the site,” Allen said.
Two developers and architect Barry Swensen are talking with O’Connor about building an assisted living facility next to the hospital building; it is currently zoned for a 100-bed facility.
And, finally, a fourth leg is a possible urgent-care facility on the site, a service which Morgan Hill has been without since July 2002. Next week the team talks to Kindred Healthcare, an acute care company based in Louisville, Ky.
Chang beamed widely during Allen’s presentation.
“I am so very happy,” she said Thursday. “ It’s finally happening.”
Allen said the DePaul Health Center is applying to be a member of the Daughters of Charity Health System.
The center will be named after St. Vincent DePaul, who was born in France in the sixteenth century and who founded the Daughters of Charity in the seventeenth. His focus, which he passed on to the Daughters, was on serving the sick and the poor.
“I was pleasantly surprised about the naming of the facility,” Kennedy said. “It’s a big step forward.”
The council established the Morgan Hill Community Health Foundation, gave it $500,000 to study and recruit the lost physicians and services. The foundation worked with Saint Louise but was unable to make significant headway against a monumental vacancy. It did, however, define the problem and solution from an in depth study of health care needs, and it raised a matching amount of funds, the last from a highly successful black tie affair in May at Corde Valle Country Club.
Chang asked Allen what O’Connor needed from the city.
“Just continued support from the council and the foundation,” Allen said. “We’re here to stay.”
