Hospital Chain Plans 24-Hour Acute-Care Center in Conejo Valley

The country’s No. 2 for-profit hospital chain is planning to move into the Conejo Valley, replacing the emergency services lost when Westlake Medical Center was sold last year and eyeing sites for a full-fledged acute-care hospital.

Answering the demand from Westlake residents, Tenet Healthcare Corp. of Santa Barbara is hoping to open its 24-hour urgent-care center by March, said Dr. Frank Gillingham, who will serve as the center’s medical director.

Gillingham, who was director of the Westlake hospital emergency room, declined to reveal the exact location of the facility, saying only that it will be in the heart of the community. The center will function as a satellite of Tenet’s Encino-Tarzana Regional Medical Center.

Gillingham would not discuss any plans for a full-scale hospital. But several sources familiar with the proposal say Tenet is exploring the possibility of a new facility on a 28-acre parcel next to the Westlake Hyatt in Thousand Oaks. The chain is also waiting to see if the new owners of Westlake Medical Center can legally disentangle themselves from property restrictions imposed by the former owner, Columbia/HCA.

The move marks a major challenge to the country’s No. 1 hospital chain. With hospitals in West Hills and Thousand Oaks, behemoth Columbia/HCA enjoys a monopoly on hospital services from western San Fernando Valley to the Conejo Grade. Tenet owns 126 hospitals, including facilities in Tarzana and North Hollywood.

Although the urgent-care center will be less than an emergency room, which by law must be part of an acute-care center with operating suites and an intensive-care unit, it will be equipped and staffed like an operating room, Gillingham said.

A board-certified emergency physician will be on duty at all hours, Gillingham said. Also, the center will feature a laboratory, X-rays, ultrasound and a holding area to observe patients who require brief hospitalization. Patients who need to be admitted to a hospital will be stabilized and transferred, he said.

It has not been determined whether the facility will be able to receive ambulances, he added.

The center will also receive what in the hospital business is known as “industrial” patients who have workers’ compensation claims. Dr. Douglas Vaughan will head that effort. Dr. Robert Princenthal, formally chief of radiology at Westlake Medical Center, will be in charge of radiology at the new center as well.

“The purpose of the center is to provide a possible alternative in the Conejo Valley area, to provide people in Agoura, Westlake and eastern Thousand Oaks with the emergency care they lost when Westlake hospital closed,” Gillingham said.

Through a spokeswoman, Ron Phelps, chief executive officer of Columbia Los Robles Hospital, discounted the new center as a real threat to Columbia/HCA’s business.

“If you’re going to have a 24-hour emergency room, a bona fide emergency room, you need to have a hospital setting. You need ORs [operating rooms] and an ICU,” said Kris Carraway, director of business development at Columbia Los Robles. “It would be very unfair to get our residents excited if it’s not a true ER.”

Local residents were, in fact, the impetus for the new center. North Ranch resident Stephanie McDermott and a group of doctors, including Gillingham, first approached Tenet in September.

“We said, ‘We need help. Columbia doesn’t want us to have a hospital. Columbia doesn’t want us to have an ER,’ ” McDermott recalled. “So Tenet said, ‘We’ll see what we can do.’ ”

Columbia/HCA acquired Westlake Medical Center in a hospital swap in summer 1995. Although the company initially announced it would keep the facility open, five months later it announced that it would close.

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The announcement gave Salick Health Care Inc. of Los Angeles, which at the time ran a comprehensive cancer center in leased space at the hospital, an option to buy the property, an option the company happily exercised.

Salick bought the facility for $8.15 million, but with the caveat that only cancer, dialysis, immune-deficient and transplant patients could be served there. Salick is suing Columbia to get the deed restrictions lifted.

Dr. Bernard Salick, chief executive officer of the company that bears his name, said he has talked with Tenet, along with other hospital providers, about again running an acute-care facility out of Westlake once the deed restrictions are history.

“I don’t run hospitals,” Salick said, though he acknowledged Westlake-area residents deserve just that. He had no specific comments on Tenet’s plans, though he said he has worked with the chain in other communities and considers Tenet’s chief executive officer a friend.

For Gillingham, the new center, which will probably be called Westlake Village 24-hour Medical Center, is a culmination of a dream that had its beginnings in a nightmare. He said that after Columbia/HCA shut the emergency room down in July, he received offers to head emergency rooms in Philadelphia, Seattle and St. Louis. But he felt an obligation to the community, he said.

“I feel very strongly [that] the area needs another emergency room capability. I am absolutely thrilled Tenet is offering this opportunity,” he said.