First it was Temecula. Now, Kaiser Permanente wants to build in Murrieta.
For the 86,000 Southwest Riverside County residents who receive health care through the chain, the precise location may not matter. Many simply want a network hospital to go to close by.
Currently, members must drive north to Riverside or Moreno Valley, or south to San Diego.
That’s not to say one can’t get treated locally. Under a contract, Kaiser covers most services members receive at two local hospitals run by another company.
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But there is a big geographic void when it comes to Kaiser hospitals. And there are no immediate plans to fill it. But Kaiser is working on it.
After filing a preliminary conceptual plan for a hospital in Temecula last year, Kaiser Permanente submitted a similar plan with Murrieta a few weeks ago.
The latest is for a 900,000-square-foot medical campus on 37.6 acres at Keller Road and Interstate 215.
It would appear Kaiser played Temecula and Murrieta off each other, said Steve Erie, a UC San Diego political science professor, in a telephone interview Friday, Oct. 25.
“It happens with Walmart. It happens with the big boxes,” Erie said. It happens with medical facilities, too, he said.
“It’s all about leverage,” Erie said. “‘If you don’t give us what we want, we’ll go next door.’ It’s the ‘next door strategy’ and it’s pretty common.”
Kaiser spokeswoman Karen Roberts said the medical company did not pit the area’s largest cities against each other.
In any event, Kaiser went next door. Murrieta is now the focus. Roberts said Temecula is no longer being considered.
The Murrieta plan isn’t concrete. It is a pre-application — merely a starting point for discussions.
Still, the pre-application offers a glimpse of what Kaiser might bring. It calls for an 80,000-square-foot medical office, followed by a 114-bed hospital.
Later, the hospital would expand to 254 beds.
“I can’t give an opinion on what a hospital might look like, if it is determined that one is needed,” Roberts said.
Commitment emerged as an issue in Temecula, whose leaders were determined to land a hospital in the near term. They balked at Kaiser’s request for an extended period to decide whether to build.
“They wanted to build a medical building first, and they wanted to determine later whether they would build a hospital,” said Temecula Mayor Mike Naggar. “They wanted 25 years to be able to do that, and the city just couldn’t accommodate that.”
Earlier this month, Temecula welcomed its first hospital — Universal Health Services’ 140-bed Temecula Valley Hospital.
Murrieta Mayor Rick Gibbs said the political climate is different in his city.
Rancho Springs Medical Center has had a presence for many years, Gibbs said. So has Inland Valley Medical Center, which is nearby in Wildomar. Then in 2011, Loma Linda University Medical Center – Murrieta came to town.
Gibbs said that was a factor in talks with Kaiser.
“They said, ‘We want to be in the region, but we don’t know if we’re going to be able to build a hospital.’ Our response was, ‘Look, we already have three hospitals here. That’s up to you. It’s a business decision,’” he said.
If Kaiser merely brought medical offices, Gibbs said that would be welcome.
“Kaiser’s presence in the region, in any way, shape or form, helps,” he said.
Improving health care has been a goal for years. Naggar noted leaders launched a health care analysis five years ago that found the area to be vastly underserved.
According to the study, the state, as of 2005, had on average 2.2 hospital beds for every 1,000 Californians. The rate was lower for Riverside County as a whole, at about 1.5 beds per 1,000 residents.
It was lower still in Southwest Riverside County, at barely one bed per 1,000.
The Riverside County Department of Public Health said earlier the region’s two new hospitals, coupled with a Kaiser facility, could boost Southwest Riverside County’s ratio to 1.6 per thousand.
Public Health spokesman Jose Arballo Jr. said the agency is updating hospital bed counts. He said the assessment will be completed in a few months.
Numbers aside, hospitals are offering crucial services that previously were unavailable.
In August, Loma Linda became the first local hospital — and fifth in Riverside County — to treat severe heart attacks.
Bruce Barton, director of the county Emergency Medical Services Agency, said Temecula Valley Hospital has indicated a desire to become a center for advanced heart attack treatment as well. Barton said the hospital first must operate six months, and collect six months of data.
Barton noted the county, on Oct. 1, upgraded Inland Valley’s trauma center from Level 3 to Level 2. It means the Wildomar hospital can perform a full range of surgeries on trauma patients, he said.
Gibbs said the developments are encouraging.
“We have come light years since we started this process of improving health care for Southwest Riverside County,” he said.
Date: October 28, 2013