In an era when many hospitals are closing or cutting services, Antelope Valley Medical Center in Lancaster is in full expansion mode.
The largest hospital in the Antelope Valley, with 420 licensed beds, has continually been adding offerings to serve the region’s growing population, even as it nears a financing package for a $1.1 billion replacement hospital that could break ground before the end of this year.
In recent months, Antelope Valley Medical Center has added 40 new treatment bays to its emergency room, opened an infusion center and an outpatient physical therapy center and launched a robotic surgery procedure to remove lung nodules.
In the works and set to open or launch during this year are an outpatient pharmacy, a pediatric intensive care unit, and a kidney and pancreas transplant program.
“All these programs and facilities that we have mentioned are for the community,” says Edward Mirzabegian, chief executive of Antelope Valley Medical Center. “It’s helping the community to get the care here and not have to drive outside the area to get help. They don’t have to travel long distances to get basic care.”
And those distances can be long indeed. When the pediatric intensive care unit opens, young patients will no longer have to be transported 70 miles to Children’s Hospital Los Angeles in East Hollywood or to UCLA Ronald Reagan Hospital in Westwood. Currently, the closest hospital-run physical therapy outpatient center is more than 40 miles away in the San Fernando Valley.
Mirzabegian notes that many Antelope Valley patients have had to make these long journeys repeatedly: a physical therapy program could require multiple visits per week for several months.
For emergency patients, such long trips can be life-threatening. Before the 7,200-square-foot emergency room expansion last fall that added 40 treatment bays, the hospital was recording around 120,000 emergency room visits per year, making it one of the busiest in the state, according to Adam Blackstone, spokesman for the Hospital Association of Southern California, an industry advocacy group.
Mirzabegian adds that the hospital’s trauma center is the fourth busiest in Los Angeles County.
The emergency department expansion should reduce the need for patients to be diverted to other hospitals in the Santa Clarita or San Fernando valleys, both Blackstone and Mirzabegian say.
Improving financial condition
Many of these added programs and services have been in the works for years, but with the pandemic keeping people away from hospitals and stressing hospital finances, they are only coming to fruition now. Mirzabegian says over the last couple of years, elective surgeries have bounced back from abnormally low levels during the pandemic, providing much-needed revenue.
For the fiscal year that ended June 30, the hospital reported net patient revenue of $469 million, up from $440 million for the previous fiscal year.
“We did finish very well over the last couple years,” Mirzabegian says. “Our financial situation has definitely improved.”
Replacement hospital building: Long and winding road
Antelope Valley Medical Center opened 70 years ago as Antelope Valley Hospital and most of the hospital facilities date from that era. Planning for a replacement building began more than a decade ago, spurred in part by a state mandate that by 2030, all hospital inpatient buildings be able to keep functioning during and after a major earthquake. Also, the existing building simply wasn’t designed to handle the current patient volumes.
Three times – in 2018, 2020 and 2022 – the Antelope Valley Healthcare District Board of Directors put bond measures to fund the replacement hospital before Antelope Valley voters, and each time, the measures failed to garner the 62% vote margin to pass.
“It’s quite clear that not enough of the population approves,” Mirzabegian says.
The unfavorable vote outcomes also dissuaded the hospital and district from pursuing a capital campaign.
Instead, the hospital and district are now pursuing a public-private-partnership financing package. According to Mirzabegian, as of mid-March, negotiations over the loan deal were in the final stages. He has not specified the amount of the loan or details on the other parties involved.
If and when the loan deal goes through, he says the 411,000-square-foot, five-story replacement hospital could break ground before the end of the year next to the existing three-story, 355,000-square-foot hospital, which would be demolished. The current timetable calls for the new facility to open in 2029.
Mirzabegian says the space on which the existing hospital now sits will be turned into mixed-use housing and a hotel as part of the Lancaster Health District Master Plan.
According to the hospital’s latest annual report, the replacement hospital will have somewhat increased capacity, but perhaps the biggest difference will be a greater number of single-patient rooms to prioritize patient privacy. It will also feature modernized infrastructure and the latest in medical technology, which the annual report says will be crucial in recruiting highly skilled physicians.
Blackstone, of the Hospital Association of Southern California, says the replacement hospital will have a transformative effect on the entire Antelope Valley region.
“It represents an investment in infrastructure, enhancing capacity, modernizing facilities and reinforcing emergency and specialty care access for the community,” he says.
Funding challenges ahead
While Antelope Valley Medical Center may now be on sounder financial footing, Mirzabegian says he’s keeping an eye on developments at the federal level that could once again threaten the hospital’s fiscal stability.
The administration of President Donald Trump and the Republican-led Congress have proposed deep cuts to funding for Medicaid, the health care program for low-income Americans that is administered by individual states. A budget blueprint passed by the House in February calls for nearly $900 billion in Medicaid program cuts. But there has been fierce pushback from health care advocates and even residents in Republican districts, so it’s far from certain that the final budget package will include that level of cuts.
Nearly 40% of Antelope Valley Medical Center patients are on Medi-Cal, the state’s Medicaid program, not surprising given the medical center’s status as a safety-net hospital that must provide care for all who seek it, regardless of ability to pay.
Mirzabegian notes that whatever Medicaid funding cuts are ultimately enacted, they won’t hit all at once.
“The cuts would hurt every hospital, but it would happen over 10 years,” he says.
Furthermore, he adds, he and administrators of other hospitals are pushing for more state-level funding for safety-net hospitals. This would supplement an existing state-mandated program that requires non-safety-net hospitals to pay into a fund to support safety-net hospitals. Advocates say that fund is insufficient to handle a further round of massive federal cuts to Medicaid.
Whether through that fund or some other means, Mirzabegian says, “We remain confident that California will step up and cover much of the funding cuts.”
