The 300,000-square-foot hospital will include an ICU and 100 beds, in today's bite-sized hospital and health industry news from California, Colorado, and Florida.
- California: HHS' Office for Civil Rights (OCR) on Friday issued a notice of violation threatening to withhold federal funding from California over the state's requirement that private health insurers cover abortion care. OCR said the requirement violates federal law and gave California 30 days to stop enforcing the requirement, but the agency didn't state which funds HHS would withhold from California for not complying or when OCR would take action. Trump administration officials said the announcement should serve as a warning to other states with similar requirements. California Attorney General Xavier Becerra (D) in a tweet posted Friday wrote that the state will "fight" OCR's actions "by any means necessary" (Wan/Abutaleb, Washington Post, 1/24; Becerra tweet, 1/24).
- Colorado: Estes Park Health has tapped Vern Carda to serve as the health system's CEO, effective March 23. Carda currently is VP of regional operations for Billings Clinic, where his responsibilities have involved overseeing operations at regional critical access hospitals and regional branch clinics. He previously served as VP at Sanford Health Network (Gooch, Becker's Hospital Review, 1/24).
- Florida: Jacksonville-based Baptist Health plans to build a $200 million, full-service hospital on its campus in Fleming Island. The 300,000-square-foot, 100-bed hospital will offer cardiology and women's services and include an ICU. Baptist Health officials said construction on the new hospital is scheduled to begin in the spring and end in early 2022 (Paavola, Becker's Hospital Review, 1/24).