Dive Brief:
- UCLA Health has acquired West Hills Hospital and Medical Center from for-profit hospital giant HCA Healthcare, the academic medical center said on Friday.
- The deal, which was first announced in January, will bolster UCLA’s inpatient capacity, according to the health system. The newly purchased hospital, renamed UCLA West Valley Medical Center, operates 260 beds.
- The “vast majority” of healthcare workers and support staff will continue to be employed at the hospital after the deal, and UCLA will develop a long-term plan to upgrade the facility, the system said in a press release.
Dive Insight:
The West Valley purchase comes as the system seeks to manage capacity issues its five medical centers and hospitals.
In its fiscal year 2023 ended June 30, UCLA recorded 38,436 admissions, a nearly 2% increase year over year, according to a financial and operational report on the University of California medical centers. Patient days jumped nearly 6% during the period.
West Valley includes seven operating rooms and a free-standing ambulatory surgical center. The hospital also sits on a 14-acre lot, leaving space for expansion.
“[The deal] will both increase convenience for patients living and working in the San Fernando Valley and provide critically needed inpatient hospital capacity in the UCLA Health system to serve more patients who require highly specialized care and treatments,” said Johnese Spisso, president of UCLA Health and CEO of the UCLA Hospital System, in a statement.
The sale will also provide patients with an enhanced care network and improved access to specialty services, according to an HCA spokesperson.
The sale leaves HCA, the largest for-profit operator in the U.S., with five hospitals in California, according to the company’s website. Workers at some HCA sites in the state, including the former West Hills facility, voted to strike multiple times last year, citing staffing concerns.
HCA has lately inked plans to expand. Early this year on an earnings call, CEO Sam Hazen said HCA had over $2 billion of new capital projects scheduled to come online in 2024, including freestanding outpatient services — a growth area for the provider — and new hospitals.
“We’re pretty consistent in our allocation of capital. It’s not disproportionately oriented to any one category of our business,” the executive said.
Though the for-profit grew revenue and beat Wall Street expectations on earnings in the fourth quarter, the system continued to fight financial pressure from its acquisition of physician staffing firm Valesco. The deal is projected to cost HCA $150 million in negative earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization in 2023 and 2024, CFO Bill Rutherford said in January.
HCA will report first quarter earnings on April 26.
