Upscale expansion

With an eye toward meeting the needs of North State residents who look elsewhere for health care, Oroville Hospital is expanding its services and its physical footprint.

The hospital announced last week that it would open a 68,000-square-foot complex at 2450 Oro Dam Boulevard—the old Montgomery Ward building that Oroville Hospital is leasing a few blocks from the medical center’s main campus on Olive Highway. Along with housing an internal-medicine clinic and expanded physical-therapy center, the facility (called Dove’s Landing, after the bird in Oroville Hospital’s logo) will hold a medical spa, dialysis center, pharmacy and urgent care. The penthouse will contain administrative offices.

“We’ve been watching that building for a long time,” Robert Wentz, CEO of Oroville Hospital, told the CN&R. “We wanted an upscale, beautiful medical office building to meet the needs of our population who have been driving to Sacramento for their health care. We wanted something to be competitive with that standard.

“A lot of people in Oroville come from Southern California or the Bay Area, and are used to a certain standard. We are going to offer it.”

Case in point is the aesthetic medicine office, which Wentz said will “take advantage of newer laser technology” to offer skin resurfacing, hair removal, non-invasive facelifts and vein ablation (a technique that destroys varicose veins). It also will administer Botox and other cosmetic treatments.

Meanwhile, proximity to the Oroville Sports Club will allow physical therapists to expand their treatments to include water modalities.

The new offices at Dove’s Landing will accept Medicare and most private insurance plans, though cosmetic procedures at the medical spa are not typically covered by insurance and will require payment by the patient. Other hospital clinics will continue to accept Medi-Cal patients.

Dove’s Landing is expected to open in four to seven months. (“Hopefully before the end of the year, we’ll have a party,” Wentz said.) Oroville Hospital elected to keep the exterior shell of the building—which was recently remodeled—and fully refit the interior.

“It’s a very sturdy, tilt-up concrete construction with tremendous utilities coming in,” Wentz said of the decision not to raze the existing structure. “It’s a very good building that’s stood the test of time.”

Demolition of inside walls has already begun. Oroville Hospital will keep the public posted on the project via updates on its website at www.orovillehospital.com/construction.