New Loma Linda Hospital?

By Stephen Wall

LOMA LINDA – Faced with growing health-care demands in the region, Loma Linda University officials want to build a $1 billion children’s hospital in the city.

Officials stress that construction is contingent on many factors and is by no means a certainty.

“This is not a done deal,” said Zareh Sarrafian, administrator of Loma Linda University Children’s Hospital.

“But,” he also noted, “the institution plans for the future. We want to continue to provide world-class health care for children and families. At some point, we hope we end up with a new children’s hospital.”

Those plans could have the new hospital near Loma Linda Academy on 40 acres of university-owned property on Redlands Boulevard. Sarrafian said the hospital could break ground around 2012 “if all the stars and the moons lined up.”

The new hospital is intended to be a “one-stop campus” for pediatric and maternal services. There would also be a medical office building and facilities for research, Sarrafian said.

The existing five-story children’s hospital, next to the nine- story medical center on the university’s main campus, has 220 beds as well as a neonatal intensive care unit.

The children’s hospital opened in 1993 and serves a region that includes nearly 1.2 million children in San Bernardino, Riverside, Inyo and Mono counties.

The medical center and children’s hospital, owned and operated by the Seventh-day Adventist Church, serve 1,000 outpatients a day in addition to inpatient care.

“We’re at capacity most of the time,” Sarrafian said.

Officials are in the process of finalizing a master plan for the project. The children’s hospital would be converted to adult services when the new facility opens.

Health-care experts say that building new hospitals and medical facilities is difficult because of rising construction costs and declining state and federal reimbursements to serve low-income patients who are uninsured.

“Reimbursements for hospitals and the guarantee of a stable level of revenue is not there as much as it used to be,” Eric Frykman, Riverside County’s public health director, said in a recent interview. “The other piece is that hospitals are horribly expensive to build.”

Sarrafian said that last year the institution lost about $90million because its reimbursements did not cover the amount needed to provide services.

It’s also harder to raise money to build a hospital in the Inland Empire, which has fewer well-heeled donors than Orange and Los Angeles counties, he said.

“It will require an aggressive and successful philanthropic commitment. We’re going to need the help of the community to build this,” he said.

(c) 2008 The Sun, San Bernardino, Calif.. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.