The city’s booming retail and residential growth is having an
unexpected and welcome benefit. Suddenly, Gilroy is on the verge of
becoming a health care center.
Gilroy – The city’s booming retail and residential growth is having an unexpected and welcome benefit. Suddenly, Gilroy is on the verge of becoming a health care center.
Saint Louise Regional Hospital plans to renovate its facilities and add heart and cancer treatment centers. The county also recently announced it will build a public health clinic in town. If it all comes off, Gilroyans won’t have to shuffle off to San Jose for health care much longer.
“We like that. It’s a very positive thing,” Mayor Al Pinheiro said. “Just as we like to see people stay local to shop, we want them to be able to stay local for quality health services and not have to travel. We welcome any service that will give our citizens an opportunity for quality care.”
Saint Louise CEO Ted Fox said the plans are “not a done deal,” but are in keeping with the hospital’s goal of being the center of health and healing for South County.
“We want to make sure we’re doing the right thing for the community and making our way toward expanding services,” Fox said. “If we’re going to be the center, we need to make sure we’re growing with the community and anticipate the needs of the community as it develops and changes.”
To that end, administrators at the hospital and its parent, Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent DePaul, are working out the last details of a $25-million project to overhaul Saint Louise’s emergency department and outpatient surgery services. The hospital is also hard at work on a lease agreement with Pacific Medical Buildings, a San Diego company that would build an 85,000-square-foot office building with cardiovascular and oncology, or cancer, specialists.
“We’re still working out the details, but this is a very viable project,” Daughters of Charity CFO Robert Issai said. “Our commitment to the Gilroy area is there and that’s why we are embarking on this investment.”
Fox said expanded urgent care facilities are desperately needed for a hospital that serves 25,000 people a year in its emergency room, a number he called “extraordinary for a hospital our size.”
South County residents will also benefit from acute care services that will be available at the Valley Health Center Gilroy, a county facility scheduled to open in 2008. Saint Louise renovations may also be complete by then.
“They are a good provider,” Fox said of the county. “We’ve been talking with them about arrangements to work together and serve the community. They’ll be a good addition.”
And the medical office building will offer the kind of long-term treatment options lacking in South County.
“Particularly oncology services,” Fox said. “Folks have to get a lengthy course of treatment. If they end up having to go to other places to get the care they need, that’s not good for them and their families.”
According to state statistics, Saint Louise serves about 41 percent of the people in Gilroy who go to a hospital.
The other major providers are Kaiser and Santa Clara Valley Medical Center, both in San Jose.
Hospital administrators are conducting market research to figure which services will keep more of Gilroy’s patients in town.
“Our objective is to increase the number of higher acuity patients we keep in the local community and allow them to come to the local hospital,” said Jaye Dale, Saint Louise’s vice president of strategic planning. “Offer a certain level of services so we can have more patients come here with heart or cancer issues.”
Fox and Dale also hope that expanding services will also attract patients from a broader region. About 87 percent of its patients come from within a 20-mile radius.
Saint Louise first opened in Morgan Hill in 1989, off Cochrane Road at the site of the now closed DePaul Health Center.
The hospital relocated to north Gilroy in 1999. it has 93 beds and participates in the CALSTAR emergency helicopter transport program.
New health centers
$25 million project
25,000 square feet
25,000 emergency room patients seen each year at Saint Louise
41 percent of Gilroy residents go to Saint Louise
2008 scheduled opening
