California Heart Medical Associates (CHMA) pledged $100,000 last month to Community Medical Centers, targeting half for the Clovis Community Medical Center expansion and half for cardiovascular services at Community Regional Medical Center. 

Katie Zenovich, executive director of Community Medical Foundation, noted: “This is the first gift to the Clovis Expansion from a cardiovascular group!  It is truly awesome. Hopefully it will encourage other medical groups to also contribute to the campaign, which will benefit their patients.”

“From a cardiovascular view we want to make sure that the Clovis catheterization lab is the best it can be so our Clovis patients don’t have to travel elsewhere,” said Dr. Bipin Joshi, a cardiologist with CHMA which also includes Dr. Lakhjit Sandhu and Dr. Khoi Le. Drs. Joshi and Sandhu have been participating in a catheterization lab pilot project at Clovis. The hospital was one of six statewide chosen to study the safety and effectiveness of elective angioplasties in hospitals that do not have open heart surgery on site.

Dr. Joshi said he’s seen firsthand how busy Clovis Community has gotten – especially in the emergency room, which is projected to see 50,000 patient visits annually and will be three times larger once the expansion is completed.

The five year, $300 million expansion plan will nearly double Clovis Community’s bed capacity and give every patient a private room. Expansion of the outpatient care center was completed in October 2009, expanding the Marjorie E. Radin Breast Care Center, creating a new dedicated endoscopy center, adding four new operating rooms and creating a home for the hospital’s highly acclaimed fertility center. Additional plans call for a five-story patient bed tower, a dedicated women’s and infants’ pavilion and the three-times larger emergency department. All are already under way and the entire project is scheduled to be completed in 2013.

This story was reported by Erin Kennedy. She can be reached at ekennedy@communitymedical.org.