Kaiser Permanente Opens Showcase Hospital in Oakland

OAKLAND, Calif. — Kaiser Permanente recently opened a new medical center in central Oakland, California. The 12-story, 349-bed, state-of-the-art hospital on the corner of Broadway and MacArthur Boulevard — directly across the street from the medical center it replaces — demonstrates Kaiser Permanente’s leadership in transforming care, and reinforces a longstanding and ongoing commitment to the City of Oakland.

“This new building culminates a years-long capital program to keep our hospitals and medical offices state of the art,” said Gregory A. Adams, group president and regional president of Kaiser Foundation Hospitals and Health Plan, Inc., in Northern California. “The new medical center continues the long history we have had with the city of Oakland, and renews our commitment to enhance and improve the health and well-being of our members, and of the community at large.”

The new hospital has all private rooms with room service, Wi-Fi and pull-out guest beds so relatives can stay close to loved ones hospitalized overnight. It contains a 24-hour emergency department with 52 private treatment bays, eight labor and delivery rooms and 14 inpatient operating rooms. It joins a specialty medical office building next door that opened Jan. 6. That facility has 102 provider offices, six outpatient operating rooms, seven outpatient procedure rooms, a new parking garage, a laboratory and a pharmacy. Five other medical office buildings nearby complete the medical center campus.

With its completion, the Oakland Medical Center solidifies and expands its role as a regional hub for pediatric inpatient and surgical care, and contains a full-service “children’s hospital within a general hospital.”

The pediatric unit will serve children from throughout Kaiser Permanente’s Northern California region. The unit has all the pediatric sub-specialty services that any children’s hospital provides, as well as a pediatric intensive care unit, a neonatal intensive care unit and gathering areas specially designed for children.

Oakland Medical Center is the first in Northern California to have an intra-operative magnetic resonance imaging system, an advanced imaging technology that pediatric neurosurgeons at the hospital will use during brain surgery.

Throughout the hospital, patient rooms feature the “Get Well Network,” an interactive electronic patient care board connected to a 42-inch plasma screen. Patients can view television programs and patient-education videos, find the names of doctors and nurses and read a care schedule. They can also order room-service meals using the small bedside keyboard.

On the first floor entrances and in each elevator lobby, an electronic “way-finding” board helps members and visitors find people and destinations in the hospital, in English, Spanish and Chinese.

The Oakland Medical Center is the second of three Kaiser Permanente hospitals that are opening this year in the San Francisco Bay Area. The new San Leandro Medical Center opened June 3, and the Redwood City Medical Center will open in December. Together, the three hospitals represent a more than $2-billion investment to expand access to healthcare in the Northern California region.

Architect for the medical center was NBBJ; contractor was McCarthy Construction.

Photo courtesy of NBBJ.