Newsroom

May 7, 2018
CHA Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center Breaks Ground on New Patient Care Tower
LOS ANGELES–(BUSINESS WIRE)–CHA Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center (HPMC) has broken ground on a new patient care tower designed to further meet the community’s needs while assuring that Hollywood’s first medical facility meets all current state seismic requirements.

“The modernized campus will provide the healing environment and accessible care that our patients deserve while furnishing our medical staff and other clinicians with the tools they need – including the DaVinci Robotic Surgical System – to deliver the highest-quality medical care,” said HPMC President and Chief Executive Officer Robert Allen.

The new 174,954-square-foot acute care services replacement hospital building will replace the existing building at an estimated cost of $291 million. The construction represents the final portion of a three-phase, $350 million campus upgrade, $300 million of which is being funded through a federal government loan and financial institutions in recognition of the fact that this construction project is meaningful toward enhancing the public healthcare needs of the surrounding community.

Designed to enrich the overall patient experience, the seismic upgrade of the hospital’s Doctors Tower and South Wing began in October 2016 and is expected to be completed by the end of this year. The hospital’s new parking structure broke ground in May 2017 and is expected to be completed later this year as well.

Included in the new patient tower will be a new and expanded emergency department with 20 exam rooms, including a private exam room for women’s services, and more than 26,000 square feet of space – double in size from the current emergency department. The new department will also include a chest pain observation area and detox area.

Featured in the tower will be a new maternity and neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) with 13 labor/delivery/recovery rooms, three surgical suites and 19 NICU beds, making it one of the largest birthing departments in Los Angeles. The tower will also include a new medical/surgical unit with all-private rooms and a floor offering seven operating rooms, 20 pre-operative and recovery beds, a cardiac catheterization laboratory, and an electrophysiology laboratory.

The emergency department portion of the project is targeted for 2020 occupancy as other project elements continue to completion. Also anticipated for a 2020 occupancy is a new dietary department, which will be located on the subterranean level of the patient tower along with a mechanical room and an IT room.

“While initially triggered by state seismic requirements, we see this as an opportunity to achieve far more than is required and to better position the medical center for the long term by providing improved facilities and a broader range of programs in an accessible, welcoming, patient-friendly environment,” said Allen. “In that regard our new campus will truly represent a future of healthcare in Los Angeles, and we are excited to bring this to our community.”

Designed by KMD Architects (who designed Rodeo Street in Beverly Hills and the FBI office in Texas) and built by contractor Skanska USA, Allen says that the additions provide “a distinctive image for HPMC within the modernist vernacular characteristic of contemporary Los Angeles architecture, executed with sufficient care to be cost effective and to remain appropriate well into the future.”

California’s seismic retrofitting law was passed in the wake of the 1994 Northridge earthquake. It strengthens structural requirements at acute care medical centers and mandates that all hospitals comply with the regulations by 2030. The ultimate public safety benefit of the act is to have general acute care hospital buildings that not only are capable of sustaining a seismic event, but are also capable of continued operation and provision of acute care medical services after the event.

Owned by CHA Health Systems, HPMC has been an indispensable partner and resource within the Hollywood community since its founding in 1924. It is a community-based, safety-net general acute care hospital with 434-licensed beds and operates an intensive care unit, a telemetry unit, an acute rehabilitation unit, a labor and delivery/obstetrics unit, a 24-hour emergency department, surgical operating rooms, and an 89-bed skilled nursing facility. Its diverse medical staff, which pledges quality care with compassion and respect, includes more than 500 physicians in 69 specialties representing over 75 different countries. With a workforce of more than 1,300 employees, HPMC is one of Hollywood’s top-10 employers.

HPMC has been nationally recognized with the following quality awards from Healthgrades, the leading online resource for comprehensive information about physicians and hospitals:

• Patient Safety Excellence Award (2017)
• Labor & Delivery Excellence Award (2017)
• Obstetrics/Gynecology Excellence Award (2017)
• Five-Star Recipient in Hip Fracture Treatment (2018)
• Five-Star Recipient in Back Surgery (2018)
• Five-Star Recipient in Treatment of Heart Failure (2018)