Our View | HMNH Plan Serves SCV

Our View
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Santa Clarita is a great city. We love working and living here and being a vital part of this city.

One of the essential qualities of a vibrant and growing city is first-class health care. We have that here in Santa Clarita in the form of Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital.

Under the leadership of President/CEO Roger Seaver, Marlee Lauffer, vice president of marketing and communications, Patrick Moody, director of marketing and public relations, and many others, HMNH has blossomed from a small-town hospital into a major full-service medical center.

Founded in 1975, the hospital has grown with our community and is a 358-bed hospital that includes a major trauma center, stroke center, behavioral health unit, cancer programs, cardiovascular services, diabetes management programs, joint replacement and spine surgery programs, maternity services, surgery center, the Sheila R. Veloz Breast Center, emergency rooms, a new patient tower, intensive care unit, and more.

Can you imagine our community without HMNH? Or how we would have coped during this COVID-19 pandemic without the hospital? It’s unthinkable.

The hospital has been planning for the future growth of our community and is preparing to grow again. 

Hospital leaders have put forth a proposal for the City Council to approve on Tuesday, having already passed the Planning Commission 5-0. The plan calls for entitlements for two buildings with 200,000 square feet of space in the form of a diagnostic and treatment building and an inpatient building.  

The buildings are intended to allow for maximum flexibility in planning for future ancillary services. The hospital may use the two new buildings to relocate patient admitting or even existing inpatient beds. The inpatient building does not add additional patient bed capacity beyond the current 368 beds, but would allow the upgrade and relocation of 92 existing beds to comply with California Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development and Americans with Disabilities Act requirements. The space in the current main hospital could then be reused for clinical or administrative services. Also included in the entitlements would be a three-story above-ground parking structure for 292 spaces on the Orchard Village lot. 

The only argument against the hospital expansion that we have heard of is that there should be another hospital on the east side of town. No one is against that idea. If a private hospital wants to build a $150 million hospital facility on the east side of town, that’s great, but it’s not up to HMNH to build it or even entice another hospital to come to Santa Clarita. 

It’s also not the city’s right nor in the best interest of its citizens to try to limit the care at HMNH in order to artificially create pressure for an additional hospital on the east side. 

Right now, our community has one full-service hospital. Everyone in town — east side, west side, any side — needs it to be the best it can be.

Henry Mayo is here.

They want to give the best and most advanced care possible, and you can’t fault HMNH for being the only hospital here.

We urge the City Council on Tuesday to approve the expansion of Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital — continuing the city’s tradition of doing what’s right for this valley and ensuring that Santa Clarita continues to be a first-class city.

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