North San Diego County residents will likely have more options for their medical care in the near future thanks to a new partnership between UC San Diego Health and Tri-City Medical Center in Oceanside.
The board of Tri-City voted unanimously to partner with UCSD Health, the vote is pending approval from the regents of the University of California system. UCSD Health is looking to take over operations of Tri-City by March.
Recently, like many smaller hospitals in the region, Tri-City Medical Center had to close its labor and delivery services department, but now they're hoping to bring those services back.
"To be able to bring women and newborn services, not just to bring it back, but to really envision it in a way that allows women to access specialty care here, that really had never been accessible to residents of North County in the past, is really, truly invigorating and exciting," said Dr. Gene Ma, CEO of Tri-City Medical Center.
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In addition to reopening a labor and delivery department, UCSD Health promises to offer more cancer care services and clinical trials. They also plan to transform a currently vacant medical office building into a hospital tower that will provide radiation oncology surgery services and minimally invasive specialty care.
"The intention is to open infusion beds and other cancer services at Tri City Medical Center and frankly, if we look at our overall patient volume, it might be about 10% coming from the zip codes around Tri City, but when you start looking at things like labor and delivery and cancer care that people will travel for, it's much higher - it's 20 or 30%. So we know that there's already an interest," said Dr. Christopher Longhurst, chief medical officer of UCSD Health.
