New medical center approved for Antelope Valley: facility to help meet growing regional need.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors has approved a $98 million plan to turn the former High Desert Hospital in Lancaster into a new medical center.

The design and construction proposal calls for a 124,000-square-foot complex at Avenue I and 3rd Street East that would include a new surgery center, clinic building, administration and support facility and center plant.

The board voted to ink a $1.2 million contract with Los Angeles architect CannonDesign to create designs and a master plan for the 15-acre site.

Once a contractor is signed, construction could start as soon as May 2008 and finish by 2010. The county is working with the city to acquire the site.

The existing complex dates to the 1950s and includes a 93,200-square-foot central building and a series of smaller buildings that housed High Desert Hospital.

The hospital has been operating as an outpatient center since the board of supervisors, citing a widening budget gap, voted to eliminate its inpatient services in 2002. The county eventually spent $472,000 converting the facility for outpatient services. It opened in 2004.

Less than two years later, however, the county found problems with the site operations.

According to a county report, the "existing hospital cannot efficiently accommodate the functions of a (care center) due to its deteriorating condition and inappropriate building configuration, which does not lend the building to function as an outpatient facility."

The new project will reconfigure the site and help reduce overcrowding at other healthcare facilities in the Antelope Valley, said Supervisor Mike Antonovich.

"This project has been a priority since the closing of High Desert Hospital three years ago," he said. "The new health center will be designed and constructed with the needs of the community as the primary focus."

Facility badly needed

The hospital arrives as Lancaster and Antelope Valley grapples with a population boon that has made the area the fastest growing in Los Angeles County.

The Antelope Valley is expected to grow from its current population of 344,212 to 445,367 in 2010, according to the Southern California Association of Governments.

The swift growth has outstripped the capacities of the region's two acute care facilities--the 117-bed Lancaster Community Hospital and 379-bed Antelope Valley Hospital.

The occupancy rate in 2005 at Lancaster Community was 79.4 percent, among the highest in Los Angeles County. Antelope Valley Hospital is also struggling the keep up: in 2004-2005, its emergency room had 98,000 visits, the second highest number in the county. Even as an outpatient facility, High Desert facility was expected to handle 154,400 patients in 2010, up from an estimated 113,028 in 2006, according to the county.

To address the demand, officials at both hospitals have planned expansions.

A Women and Infants Pavilion recently opened at Antelope Valley and plans are in the works to expand the ER.

Also in Palmdale, Universal Health Services, which owns Lancaster Community, is building the $170 million Palmdale Regional Medical Center slated open next year.

Lancaster Community Hospital CEO Robert Trautman said the new county facility is badly needed and will likely reduce the overcrowding at other hospitals in the Antelope Valley.

"It's going to take a lot of the burden off the locals ERs," he said. "It's going to be a win-win for everybody."

BY CHRIS COATES 

Staff Reporter