Saint Joseph Hospital

The public will be able to tour a new emergency medical center and take part in a health fair and other activities at an open house Saturday for St. Joseph Hospital and Children's Hospital of Orange County's new $11-million center with a special area for children. A dedication ceremony Friday will celebrate a successful five-year campaign to raise funds for the center, St. Joseph Hospital spokeswoman Valerie Orleans said. About $5.5 million was collected through private donations, she said.

Beating out scores of hospitals nationwide, Children's Hospital of Orange County and St. Joseph Hospital won a $5.5-million contract Wednesday to establish a national medical center to practice a promising new alternative to bone marrow transplants. The two hospitals will explore the lifesaving potential for umbilical cord blood transplants with the grant from the National Institutes of Health.

When new mothers leave the hospital with their babies, they often arrive home before they remember that there were questions they meant to ask. That, plus typical new-parent anxiety, can result in panicked calls back to the maternity ward. To help those new mothers, St. Joseph Hospital on Wednesday opened its Mother-Baby Assessment Center, which offers free follow-up visits two to four days after delivery.

St. Joseph Hospital in Orange is under state investigation for mistakenly doing knee-repair surgery on a patient's good knee, the third "wrong-site" procedure to occur at Orange County's largest hospital since January 2006. The Feb. 15 operation was intended to repair a patient's left knee but was "inadvertently performed on the right knee," according to a statement released by the hospital in response to questions from The Times.

Children's Hospital of Orange County, having regained its financial footing, is striking out on its own again after little more than three years under the management wing of St. Joseph Hospital in Orange. The mutual decision was announced Friday and came after CHOC earned $3 million from operations last year--its first profit in five years. CHOC was on its way to higher earnings this year, said Larry K. Ainsworth, St. Joseph's chief executive.

Layoff notices were handed Tuesday to 130 employees at St. Joseph Hospital of Orange, one of several steps being taken by the 440-bed hospital to trim about $19.3 million from operating expenses for the coming fiscal year, hospital officials said. The layoffs are part of an operational reorganization aimed at keeping the facility in the black without compromising medical service, hospital president Larry Ainsworth said. The layoffs would reduce the 3,000-employee work force by 4.3%. St.

About 90,000 members of PacifiCare Health Systems Inc. will lose access to the hospitals and doctors of Orange-based St. Joseph Health System on June 30, the two organizations announced. An additional 20,000 seniors belonging to Secure Horizons, the Medicare HMO run by Santa Ana-based PacifiCare, will no longer have access to St. Joseph facilities as of March 31. That means PacifiCare members now seeing St.

The event: The TODOS Seasonal Soiree, benefiting the Heart Center at St. Joseph Hospital of Orange. TODOS, a philanthropic support group for the hospital, sponsored "Christmas Around the World" Dec. 7 at Disney's new Grand Californian Hotel in Anaheim. Sounds of the season: The soft strains of Christmas carols--played by harpist Tomoko Sato--welcomed 115 guests and lent an air of festive elegance to the evening, which began with a reception and silent auction.

St. Joseph Hospital plans to take over management of its financially wayward offspring, Children's Hospital of Orange County, the two institutions said Wednesday. The two agreed to hire a consultant to help them put together a management contract this summer, though terms have yet to be worked out. Assuming both sides proceed with the plan, CHOC, the only pediatric hospital in the county, would remain an independent institution with its own board and management, but St.

St. Joseph Hospital took over financial management Tuesday of struggling Children's Hospital of Orange County. The management plan, which allows CHOC to remain an independent institution with its own board and management, was approved by both institutions' boards. The two organizations announced plans for the business arrangement in June.