To the tune of $712 million, Providence is planning to expand its healthcare offerings in south Orange County with a new tower at its Mission Viejo hospital and construction of two satellite medical facilities in Rancho Mission Viejo and San Clemente.

With the added footprint, Providence aims to increase access to its healthcare services and revamp its aging hospital to meet current needs and future growth in the southern part of the county, said Providence Mission Hospital Chief Executive Seth Teigen.

When looking an population growth estimates in the areas it services, “we had to ask ourselves, is our hospital capable of taking care of that many more people in the community? And I think it was ‘no,’” Teigen said.

“We were somewhat undersized,” he said, “We had an aging facility, and we knew we were going to need to meet community need today, but also 10, 20, 50 years into the future.”

Providence Mission Hospital this year celebrated its 50th anniversary – a milestone for the facility, but evidence of its dated infrastructure.

“A 50-year-old wood building, you have all the problems that you think you would have,” Teigen said.

The Mission Viejo hospital addition that will be known as Tower 3 will be constructed over – and eventually replace – what is now the Pavilion building at Mission Hospital, located off Crown Valley Parkway. That building now is home to operating rooms, an acute rehab facility, a laboratory and other essential services.

Those facilities will be moved as the building comes down over time, some transferred into the new Tower 3 and some into other vacant parts of the hospital, Teigen said.

The new tower is expected to be fit with 10 new operating rooms and about 100 new private rooms for patients. With those, the hospital will have more than 300 beds for people admitted.

About 40% of the hospital’s rooms now are shared, Teigen said, and “one of the lessons I think we learned during the pandemic is that ability to isolate patients when needed becomes really important.”

The plan is for the new tower to also house an inpatient behavioral health unit, “to really offer something state of the art for that patient population.”

At the facilities in Rancho Mission Viejo and San Clemente, the services offered will be able to tackle the majority of issues people might show up with, Teigen said, except for more acute concerns, such as a stroke or heart attack, for which they can be transferred to Mission Hospital.

The center in San Clemente may be seen as a welcome addition for its residents, the majority of whom said in a recent survey they were supportive of having some form of new hospital built in the city. San Clemente has been without a major healthcare center, including an emergency room, since the only hospital in the city, a 73-bed facility built in 1971, was shut down in 2016 by its owner, MemorialCare Health System, because of so few patients admitted.

The new Providence facility there will be located off the 5 Freeway on West Avenida Vista Hermosa, next to the Chick-Fil-A.

“We view San Clemente as part of our service area, so as we started the planning for the center, we certainly solicited feedback from the city, from community members, from our physicians,” Teigen said. “We have lots of our caregivers and physicians that live in that community as well, and so we really feel that as the community continues to grow, we want to grow with them.”

Teigen compared the future San Clemente center to Providence’s Laguna Beach campus, which also transfers some patients with severe issues to Mission Hospital.

Emergency physicians will be on hand for patients at both new facilities, and services like medical imaging and lab work are expected to also outfit the spaces. Primary care doctors, OBGYN services and rotating specialist will also be available there, in addition to urgent care, Teigen said.

The Rancho Mission Viejo center is planned on a footprint of 42,000 square-feet, and will also include physical therapy services. It’s expected to be bigger than the San Clemente facility, which doesn’t yet have an estimated size.

The hospital system plans to spend between $40 million and $45 million on the facility in Rancho Mission Viejo, while the San Clemente site is expected to cost about $12 million to $15 million, Teigen said.

The remaining money, roughly $650 million, will go toward the new hospital tower and some other infrastructure work on the main campus to meet seismic activity standards, he added.

Providence’s expansion comes amid growth by several health care systems in Orange County.

UC Irvine broke ground last year on a $1.3 billion medical complex at its campus, including a full service hospital. With the help of a $50 million donation, Hoag Hospital is also planning three new medical facilities at his Irvine campus. And City of Hope Orange County this year opened a new, 190,000-square-foot outpatient cancer center near the Great Park. An adjacent hospital is expected to open in 2025.

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