HCA Holdings has named a replacement for the retiring Jeff Dorsey, who will step down as leader of its Continental Division, which covers the Denver market and some facilities in Kansas. Sylvia Young is returning from Las Vegas, where she had led HCA's Sunrise system since 2007.

One of HCA Holdings' hospitals in the Denver area will next year be significantly expanded via a $107 million project. Sky Ridge Medical Center will get room for 90 more beds, a women's health center and operating areas, among other things.

HCA Holdings announced Tuesday that Jeff Dorsey, the division president who oversees 11 hospitals and 16 outpatient facilities in Colorado, Oklahoma and Kansas, will retire from the company at the end of May. Dorsey came to HCA in 1981.

“Jeff has been a great leader and colleague for many years,” said Sam Hazen, President of Operations for HCA. “His stewardship of the HealthONE partnership made it a premier system and ultimately paved the way for HCA to acquire full ownership of the facilities in Denver. We will miss Jeff’s dynamic leadership, but wish him well as he moves into retirement.”

Wyoming-based Cheyenne Regional Medical Center is expanding its emergency care efforts via a partnership that includes affiliates of Nashville-based HCA.

The center will offer more comprehensive coverage of a geographic a region including southern Wyoming, northern Colorado and western Nebraska with the addition of an AirLife Denver medical helicopter service in Cheyenne. The new service is a partnership between Cheyenne Regional and HCA-HealthONE, which operates AirLife Denver.

HealthONE was created in 1995 as a joint venture between the Colorado Health Foundation and various affiliates of HCA.   

HCA HealthONE says it will submit an offer to take over the management of the city-owned Memorial Health System in Colorado Springs, Colo. The move was expected — the HCA joint venture was first said to be in talks a year ago — and puts Nashville's largest hospital chain in direct competition with Community Health Systems, which last year said it, too, is interested in managing the $500 million facility.

Colorado's attorney general has approved the proposed acquisition by HCA Holdings of the 40 percent of HCA/HealthOne it does not already own. But John Suthers has negotiated to have the hospital giant extend to 15 years its indigent-care and community benefit programs as well as a number of other smaller conditions.

The analysts at Fitch Ratings have given a B+ to the $500 million hospital giant HCA plans to raise in the coming days. And while that offering and the recent big raise to help HCA buy back Bank of America's stake will lift the company's total debt to 4.8 times EBITDA, Fitch says the pending purchase of the remainder of HealthOne in Colorado will bring that ratio back in line very quickly next year.