Regionals: Methodist Charlton Medical Center opened a new patient tower and more news ...

JACKSONVILLE, Fla.—Baptist Health, a three-hospital system based in Jacksonville, announced plans to enter a joint venture with an urgent-care provider that will rebrand its local network of clinics. Jacksonville-based Solantic owns nine clinics in the area already, and Baptist's undisclosed investment in the company will help allow the opening of up to three more local centers in the near future. Solantic and Baptist will have a 50-50 stake in the joint venture, paying half of the costs and reaping half of the profits, but the clinics will continue to be staffed and managed by Solantic under the new name Solantic Baptist Urgent Care. “As we have studied urgent care and considered many strategies for how to most effectively offer this service to the community, Solantic has emerged as the natural choice,” Baptist President and CEO Hugh Greene said in a written statement. The Solantic Baptist venture applies only to the North Florida centers. Solantic CEO Karen Bowling said the joint venture with Baptist is Solantic's fifth such partnership with hospitals in Florida. The company has more than 30 clinics across Florida, and has “aggressive” plans to expand this year through other joint ventures.

TYSONS CORNER, Va.—Not-for-profit Kaiser Permanente completed negotiations to purchase and renovate a new medical office building in Northern Virginia. The building promises to boost the area's workforce while also providing care for nearly 200,000 plan members, Kaiser said in a news release. Primary care and specialty care, imaging services, laboratory, pharmacy services, and urgent care are among the services to be offered at the facility. “Providing access to high-quality, affordable medical care remains our number one priority,” said Marilyn Kawamura, president of the Kaiser Foundation Health Plan of the Mid-Atlantic States, in a written statement. “Adding a new, comprehensive and modern medical facility at an area as central as Tysons Corner, which sits near the crossroads of I-495, I-66, and other major roadways, with several future sites for Metro rail in the works, is another major step towards that goal.” In addition, the new facility at Tysons Corner will provide an extensive selection of clinical services “combined with our state-of-the-art medical technology,” noted Bernadette Loftus, the Permanente Medical Group's associate executive director for the Mid-Atlantic States.

DALLAS—Methodist Charlton Medical Center in Dallas opened a new 72-bed patient tower last month. Part of a $116 million expansion project, the tower includes patient rooms that are double the size of previous rooms and include wireless service and flat-screen televisions. The tower also has mininursing stations, a full floor focused on telemetry for heart monitoring, and a surgery suite that includes seven operating rooms, including an operating room designed for heart surgery. Other rooms feature special equipment to treat orthopedic patients. Methodist Charlton was built in 1975 and is part of the not-for-profit Methodist Health System in North Texas.

NASHVILLE—The Tennessee Hospital Association's board voted to propose a one-year tax on hospital net revenue to avoid expected cuts of $540 million to the state's Medicaid program, TennCare, in the state fiscal year that starts July 1, the association said last week. The level of the tax and other details are still being worked out, according to the association. The proceeds of the tax would be used to boost the state's contribution to TennCare, thereby releasing federal matching dollars—similar programs are in place in at least 26 other states, according to the association. In a written statement, the association emphasized that “while hospitals will take care of patients as they always have, it is clearly the state's responsibility to fund TennCare.” The proposed tax would be levied on all nongovernmental hospitals except for critical-access and rehabilitation hospitals and 56-bed St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tenn., an association spokesman said.

COLUMBIA, S.C.—Four acute-care hospitals in South Carolina, along with other regional providers, are banding together to develop a system of care for 149,000 low-income, uninsured residents in Charleston and two other counties. Since last summer, 14 out of 46 counties in South Carolina have launched such programs to expand healthcare services to the uninsured through a project of the South Carolina Hospital Association. Participating providers in the counties receive technical support from AccessHealth SC, a program of the South Carolina Hospital Association funded by the Duke Endowment. The first step is to develop a community health system profile of available services. The University of South Carolina School of Public Health is helping with this phase of the project, which typically takes six to 12 months, according to AccessHealth SC. “All of the participants in this collaboration, many of whom might be competitors or rivals in a different setting, are committed to working together to meet the healthcare needs of everyone in our community,” said David Dunlap, president and CEO of Roper St. Francis Healthcare, Charleston, in a written statement. “This effort aims to provide our uninsured with patient-centered medical homes and the preventive care that they need and deserve.” Other participants include 656-bed MUSC Medical Center and 306-bed Trident Medical Center, both in Charleston; 106-bed East Cooper Regional Medical Center, Mount Pleasant; the Charleston County Medical Society; and the Trident United Way.

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