Becker's ASC Review

74 HEALTHCARE NEWS 7 hospital construction projects costing $500M or more By Alia Paavola I n the last two months, seven hospitals and health systems announced, advanced or completed expan- sion and renovation projects with price tags of $500 million or more. 1. Mayo-backed Destination Medical Center, a $5.6B project in Rochester, moves forward Destination Medical Center, a $5.6 billion public-private project backed by Rochester, Minn.-based Mayo Clinic, is forging ahead despite the COVID-19 pandemic. Mayo Clinic is investing $3.2 billion into the project. 2. Mass General Brigham moves forward with $2B in capital projects Boston-based Mass General Brigham is moving forward with as much as $2 billion in capital projects in Mas- sachusetts and New Hampshire. One of the planned projects includes a $1 billion building at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. 3. UC Irvine gets OK to build $1B hospital campus University of California Irvine plans to build a $1 billion hospital campus that will house a 144-bed acute care facility, ambulatory care center and cancer center. 4. New York hospital opens $545M patient pavilion Vassar Brothers Medical Center in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., has opened its $545 million patient pavilion. 5. Inova plans $1B Alexandria medical campus Falls Church, Va.-based Inova Health System will build a $1 billion medical campus in Alexandria, Va. 6. CHI Franciscan opens $500M replacement hospital in Washington state CHI Franciscan opened its $500 million, 500,000-square-foot hospital in Silverdale, Wash., that will serve as a replacement facility for St. Michael Medi- cal Center-Bremerton. 7. Harbor-UCLA Medical Center begins $1.6B upgrade Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in West Carson, Calif., began in December a $1.6 billion upgrade that will include a new inpatient tower. n WHO team shares first details of probe into pandemic's origin: 3 things to know By Erica Carbajal A fter spending time in hospitals, markets and laboratories in Wuhan, China, the World Health Organization team investigating the origins of the novel coronavirus shared findings from their initial data during a Feb. 9 news conference. Three early research findings: 1. COVID-19 may have been circulating both inside and outside of the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan in December 2019, sug- gesting it may not have been the original source of the outbreak. "The market probably was a setting where that kind of spread could have happened easily, but that's not the whole story," said Dr. Peter Ben Embarek, the investigation's international team lead. Dr. Liang Wannian, Chinese team lead of the WHO study, added that while there may have been missed cases in other regions, there's been no evidence of significant COVID-19 circulation outside of Wuhan before the December 2019 outbreak. 2. The virus "most likely" originated in animals before spreading to humans, the scientists said, emphasizing that more targeted research is needed to confirm the hypothesis and identify the intermediary animal host. 3. The team said it was "extremely unlikely" that the virus was leaked from a Wuhan research lab as earlier theories have sug- gested, adding that the group will not recommend further investi- gation into the hypothesis. "In terms of understanding what happened in the early days of De- cember 2019, did we change dramatically the picture we had be- forehand? I don't think so," Dr. Ben Embarek said. "Did we improve our understanding? Did we add details to that story? Absolutely." n Glenview cuts stake in Tenet By Ayla Ellison I nvestment firm Glenview Capital Management has a 15.38 percent stake in Tenet Healthcare after recently selling shares of the Dallas-based company, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing. Glenview sold 2.03 million shares of Tenet, a 65-hospital system, on Feb. 2. The shares traded at an average sales price of $49.57 on the day of the transaction, according to GuruFocus. Tenet shares closed Feb. 8 at $52.31 per share, up from $50.65 a day earlier, according to Yahoo Finance. n

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