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O'Connor Hospital in San Jose plans to invest $6 million to prepare for the thousands of emergency-room patients it expects in 2005 as a result of San Jose Medical Center's closure in early December.
The hospital will purchase medical equipment, expand its bed capacity, hire more than 100 employees, extend its hours for certain services and offer new services all items that weren't in the $192 million budget for fiscal year 2005, which started July 1, says Robert Curry president and CEO of O'Connor Hospital.
The majority of these plans will be implemented between November and January.
Three hospitals closest to downtown -- O'Connor Hospital, Valley Medical Center and Regional Medical Center San Jose - are expected to get the bulk of San Jose Medical Center's emergency room patients, estimated at 35,000 annually, say O'Connor and county officials.
O'Connor officials expect these patients to come to them not only because the hospital is nearby but because a number of San Jose Medical Center physicians plan to relocate there.
Officials at Regional Medical Center disagree, saying that the center will get at least half of San Jose Medical Center's emergency department patients which often account for 40 to 60 percent of a hospital's patient admissions.
San Jose Medical Center and Regional Medical Center are both owned by Nashville, Tenn.-based HCA Inc., the nation's largest for-profit hospital chain.
Leslie Kelsay spokeswoman for San Jose Medical Center, says most of the patients will go to...