Renovation of main patient tower recently completed at Sharp Grossmont Hospital
January 5, 2016 General
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 .