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Renovation of main patient tower recently completed at Sharp Grossmont Hospital

     Patients are now being treated in state-of-the-art,  upgraded rooms on all
five floors of the East Tower of Sharp Grossmont  Hospital in La Mesa, the
Grossmont Healthcare District (GHD) reports.
Over the past three years, renovation has been underway  on floors two
through five of the seven-story East Tower building, originally  constructed in
1974. The East Tower work was included in the hospital’s  Facilities Master
Site Plan. Renovation cost of $41 million was financed  through Proposition
G, a bond measure sponsored by GHD and approved by East  County voters in
June 2006.

     Each renovated floor of the East Tower has 37 patient  beds for a total of
148 beds. Among the improvements: patient-bed utility  headwalls were
replaced with advanced units; new ADA and bariatric accessible  rooms were
retrofitted; and, nurses are now using newly configured central  work stations with
upgraded lighting and finishes. Mechanical, electrical and  plumbing
systems also were modernized with new lighting throughout the floors.  Five
existing elevators were upgraded with mechanical and cosmetic  improvements.
Private restrooms also were upgraded. The project included a  seismic retrofit of
the East Tower, which will bring it into compliance with  current
California Building Code earthquake standards.

     Taxpayer-funded construction is continuing at the  publicly-owned, 540-bed
hospital which opened in 1955. Prop. G also is  currently funding
construction of a 71,000-square-foot Heart and Vascular  (H&V) Center and
18,000-square-foot Central Energy Plant (CEP). The  bond-financed construction began in
2007, and is scheduled to continue over  the next several years.

     The $60 million three-story H&V Center will  eventually expand the hospital’
s surgery capabilities with four new cardiac  catheterization labs and four
multipurpose procedural rooms that can support a  wide range of
specialties, including general surgery, minimally invasive  surgery and image-guided
surgery, as well as endovascular interventional  procedures. In addition to
the building, the current construction phase  includes a new loading dock and
materials receiving department on the lowest  level, a new pharmacy and
laboratory on the middle floor and shell space on  the top floor for the new
surgical floor build-out. Completion of the building  is scheduled for mid-2016
with completion of the surgical floor is scheduled  for late 2018.

     The $47 million, two-story Central Energy Plant will  help meet future
energy capacity needs of the hospital with new emergency  generators, boilers,
chillers, cooling towers and auxiliary systems, along  with a new
cogeneration energy system funded by Sharp HealthCare. The  cogeneration system
includes a 52-ton, 4.4-megawatt combustion turbine  generator manufactured by San
Diego-based Solar Turbines. The CEP also will  contain a new control room
that will monitor heating and refrigeration  equipment, medical air and vacuum
pumps. The new CEP is expected to save  millions of dollars in energy costs,
plus reduce the hospital’s emission of  greenhouse gas pollutants by 90
percent, GHD officials said. The new CEP was  constructed with 131 tons of
reinforced steel bars surrounded by 4.23 million  pounds of concrete with a
106-by-70-foot concrete foundation slab that is four  feet thick. Completion of
the CEP is scheduled for early 2016.

     The hospital is managed and operated by Sharp  HealthCare under a lease
agreement between GHD and Sharp HealthCare, which was  extended by voters in
2014 for an additional 30 years.

     The Grossmont Healthcare District is an East County  regional public agency
that supports various health-related community programs  and services in
San Diego’s East County. Formed in 1952 to build and operate  Grossmont
Hospital, the District is governed by a five-member board of  directors, each
elected to four-year terms, who represent more than 500,000  people residing
within the District’s 750 square miles. For more information  about GHD, visit
www.grossmonthealthcare.org .

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