North Bay Business Journal

From Marin to Mendocino, current hospital projects represent at least $550 million worth of combined construction spending.

And it’s a number that will double if and when one of the largest projects — the $500 million rebuild of Marin General Hospital — gets off the ground.

GREENBRAE — Marin General Hospital received a 10-year extension on its deadline for rebuilding a seismically sound facility from the state yesterday, which will move the completion date to 2030 instead of 2020, officials said.

GREENBRAE — Marin General hospital, the county’s largest provider of acute-care services, has undergone rapid change in the past three years, having shifted away from Sutter Health to an independent district. But perhaps its biggest and most important challenge still lay ahead, as the 235-bed facility seeks to entirely rebuild itself in order to meet state compliance with seismic safety measures.

Nearly every major health care provider in the region has recently opened a new clinic or outpatient center, and numerous others have said plans are under way for similar expansions, reflecting a concerted effort by providers to move outside of the hospital setting. …

Marin General Hospital recently opened the Baden Diabetes Center, an outpatient program that provides self-management skills, treatment and on-going guidance for patients with diabetes. …

NorthBay Healthcare is in the process of developing a new medical office building in Fairfield adjacent to its administrative center at 4500 Business Center Dr. …

St. Joseph Health recently completed the move if its Memorial Hospice program to 439 College Ave. in Santa Rosa, where it will occupy 12,000 square feet. …

Northern California Center for Well-Being will hold its third annual Workforce Wellness Symposium this month at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital. …

Throughout the debate and the recent implementation of health care reform, health experts and politicians alike have touted the shift away from the fee-for-service model to more coordinated care, leading to better outcomes and lowered spending.

Beginning this year, however, the financial health of hospitals will likely depend on just how well care is coordinated, as a relatively little-known yet critically important piece of the Affordable Care Act is enacted: the “Hospital Value-based Purchasing Program,” overseen by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid.

Value-Based Purchasing is a Medicare program started in January that seeks to hold hospitals accountable for the care they provide.

Last year, Medicare rolled out penalties for hospitals that have too many returning patients within a month.

This chart shows the effect of the two programs combined.

GREENBRAE — Marin General Hospital’s lease is set to expire in 2015, and both the health care district and the nonprofit that oversee functions of the hospital have agreed on terms of a new lease that they will put to voters in an upcoming June election.

St. Helena-based Albion Surveys announced John “Steve” Parrish as the newest member to its land surveying team. …

Cardiologist Monica Divakaruni, M.D., has joined Adventist Health-operated St. Helena Hospital Clear Lake. …

Sutter Pacific Medical Foundation announced the addition of Aruna Krishnan Jayaraman, M.D., to its network of gastroenterologists in Santa Rosa. …

Francine Halberg, M.D., radiation oncologist and breast cancer specialist at Marin General Hospital’s Marin Cancer Institute, is among 12 nationally prominent researchers and physicians named as 2012 Fellows of the American Society for Radiation Oncology. …

Tammy Brawner, a former Dominican University of California women’s basketball player and Dominican MBA grad from Oakland and Skyline High School, is the 10th female to play for the Harlem Globetrotters in its history. …

Marin Theatre Company’s board of directors has named Michael Barker as the nonprofit theater company’s new managing director. …

Jade Barrett has been named winemaker for the Howell Mountain Cabernet house. …

[Updated Wednesday, Jan. 16, 3:30 p.m.] GREENBRAE — Roughly a year after being dismissed from the long-running legal dispute between Marin General Hospital and Sutter Health, former hospital board chair Robert Heller was awarded $848,202 in legal fees and costs from the suit brought forth by the Marin Healthcare District, his attorneys said Tuesday.

Marin General, meanwhile, revealed Wednesday that it was awarded roughly $11 million in legal fees and costs as a result of being declared the prevailing party over Sutter Health.

In the next 12 to 18 months, the North Bay will see significant hospital and health care construction, with at least half a dozen major projects entering key phases or reaching completion.

GREENBRAE — The county of Marin approved a new 10-year trauma contract with Marin General Hospital, the county’s only designated trauma center.

The hospital also was recently reverified as a Level III trauma center by the American College of Surgeons.

Three North Bay hospitals received “A” grades for patient safety from the Leapfrog Group, considered the industry standard for hospital surveys. Kaiser Permanente hospitals in San Rafael and Santa Rosa and St. Joseph Health-operated Petaluma Valley Hospital each received the ranking from the Leapfrog Group, an independent national nonprofit run by employers and other large purchasers of health benefits. …

Sound Physicians, a Tacoma-based hospitalist organization, announced an agreement to provide comprehensive hospitalist services at Sonoma Valley Hospital. …

Operation Access, a nonprofit whose mission is to mobilize a network of medical volunteers, hospitals and community health centers to provide access to surgeons for low-income and uninsured people, recently held its celebration of volunteers at Lagunitas Brewery in Petaluma. …

Partnership Health Plan of California recently honored the Petaluma Health Center for achieving 100 percent of the nonprofit, managed Medi-Cal health plans’ goals. …

Sutter Health announced the appointment of Stephen Nolte as chief executive officer of Sutter’s recently announced health plan, which is currently in development in Sacramento. …

St. Helena Hospital recently raised $1.5 million at its annual foundation gala held at Silver Oak Cellars in Oakville. …

State Sen. Ed Hernandez, D-West Covina, plans to introduce legislation that would expand the powers of nurse practitioners, pharmacists and other health care workers as a means to address a shortage of primary care physicians, a problem that experts have long warned will be exacerbated by health care reform. …

SEBASTOPOL — The Palm Drive Healthcare District on Monday will decide if it should transfer operations of its medical clinic to the Prima Medical Foundation, a move that, if approved, could help the 37-bed hospital bolster its finances while perhaps recruiting new physicians and adding new services.

GREENBRAE — Marin General Hospital recently unveiled a newly built emergency department that the 235-bed hospital said will significantly improve care and patient satisfaction.

Now that Western Health Advantage formally announced its expansion into the North Bay, existing care providers said the arrival of a new health plan is an important step in providing choice for employers and consumers and will help those involved move toward a more integrated model of care.

It also caps off years of planning among the region’s hospitals and independent physicians, who collectively sought collaborations amid an increasingly competitive, consolidating health care landscape spurred by the federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010.

GREENBRAE — Marin General Hospital released a draft environmental impact report for a roughly $500 million rebuild project that will bring the 235-bed level III trauma center in line with state seismic measures while improving other features.

Western Health Advantage formally announced its plan to expand into the North Bay, adding Marin, Sonoma and Napa counties to its roster with hopes of offering a commercial health plan for employers and individuals by Jan. 1.

The Sacramento-based HMO in June only listed Sonoma and Marin counties for expansion, but it later included Napa County.

The Marin-Sonoma IPA announced its name is now Meritage Medical Network, citing a need to identify itself beyond specific geographic areas as it charts future growth while signaling a first step to becoming an accountable care organization, or ACO. …

Mark Zielazinski has joined Marin General Hospital as chief information and technology integration officer and will again be reporting to CEO Lee Domanico, for whom he worked at El Camino Hospital before Mr. Domanico left in 2006. …

The Palm Drive Health Care District recently voted to approve Tom Harlan as Palm Drive Hospital’s new chief executive officer. …

Kaiser Permanente’s Medical Center in Vacaville broke ground last week on a helipad that the hospital said will eventually be the largest to serve Solano County. …

Bill Boerum, currently treasurer of the Sonoma Valley Health Care District and in his sixth year on the board of directors, will be serving another four years because only he and two others filed for the three seats that were up for election this year. …

SANTA ROSA — The Annadel Medical Group has added physicians at an accelerating pace, making it arguably the fastest growing medical group in the region at a time health systems across the country seek to attract more physicians. …

FAIRFIELD — Shortly after expanding its reach into Marin and Mendocino counties, Partnership HealthPaln, a nonprofit managed Medi-Cal provider, went on an aggressive hiring spree, saying it intended to increase its 280-person work force by about 30 percent. …

GREENBRAE — As district hospitals look to evolve with the dramatically shifting health care landscape, no other district can quite keep pace with Marin General Hospital, overseen by the Marin Healthcare District for the past two years now. …

GREENBRAE — Marin General Hospital today said an independent arbitration judge declared Marin Healthcare District, which owns the hospital, the “prevailing party” in a long-running dispute with Sutter Health, which severed ties with the facility more than two years ago.