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Investigation: Big Newsom Donors Including Blue Shield Received No-Bid Contracts During COVID-19 Response Listen Update RequiredTo play audio, update browser or Flash plugin.
FILE - In this March 28, 2020, file photo, Bloom Energy CEO KR Sridhar, right, watches as California Gov. Gavin Newsom writes down a note during a tour with Sridhar of the Bloom Energy Sunnyvale, Calif., campus.
Beth LaBerge / Pool Photo via AP, File
UnitedHealth has been good to Gov. Gavin Newsom.
In 2018, the health care giant made two contributions to Newsom for over $58,000. In December 2019, it dropped another $31,000 into his reelection campaign.
During the pandemic, Newsom turned to UnitedHealth to solve some of California’s most vexing challenges: COVID-19 testing and data tracking. The state awarded a no-bid contract worth up to $177 million to a UnitedHealth subsidiary to expand testing. In the months following, the
Community Hospital received state approval Tuesday to activate 28 behavioral health beds, and the operator expects the first transfer patient from College Medical Center sometime this week.
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The first patient was transferred from College Medical Center at about 4:20 p.m. Tuesday afternoon. Additional patients are expected to arrive in the coming days and weeks, though agreements with some facilities still need to be ironed out, officials said.
The nearly century-old Community Hospital is not accepting walk-in patients and its emergency department is not slated to open until March. For now, the facility will only accept non-coronavirus transfer patients from other medical facilities to free up space for COVID-19 patients.
Though a regional inspector gave the go-ahead for the facility to open Monday, the hospital did not accept patients immediately because transfers must be approved by hospitals, physicians and in some cases insurance companies, said John Molina, a partner with Community’s operator, Molina, Wu Network.
State Health Department officials visited Community Hospital of Long Beach last week in what had been characterized as a final inspection, but more issues have come up that likely will keep the hospital closed until after 2021 has arrived. The inspectors found a number of items that need to be addressed/fixed, said John Molina, principal of the operator, Molina, Wu, Network, (MWN) via email. Our current staff is knocking each item down. Itâs like a âpunch list that is done at the end of construction.
Pacific6 spokesman Brandon Dowling said Tuesday that an opening date has not been set, with the situation changing literally day by day. He said the hospital still has a chance to open before the end of the year.