Palomar Pomerado Health Reviews Hospital Expansion Plans

By Gig Conaughton, North County Times, Escondido, Calif.

Oct. 17–POWAY, Calif. — Palomar Pomerado Health board members and the hospital district’s strategic planning committee received an update of their massive renovation and expansion plans at a meeting Tuesday.

The two-hour meeting at Poway’s Pomerado Hospital featured no surprises and plenty of watercolor paintings depicting how a rebuilt Palomar Medical Center could become “the jewel” of a revitalized Escondido, as well as planned expansion and improvements for Pomerado Hospital.

Michael Covert, Palomar Pomerado Health’s chief executive officer, said the update was part of the hospital district’s promise to keep members of the communities apprised of the massive projects’ progress.

“They got sort of the second updated version of the (Escondido) downtown, which has not changed,” he said.

Palomar Medical Center plans call for a bigger, faster emergency department, more patient beds and operating rooms, and even an in-house restaurant.

Pomerado Hospital’s plans include expansion from 107 beds to 201 beds, building of a five-story patient tower, a conference and education center, and expanded diagnostic and treatment centers.

In addition to the hospital improvements, the district plans to build satellite medical centers in Rancho Penasquitos and Ramona.

Voters endorsed expansion plans in November 2004, when they overwhelmingly passed a general obligation bond measure expected to raise $496 million, which was to pay a portion of the then-$753 million expansion.

However, by 2006 the cost had swollen to $983 million. Then, in May, Covert told the board the expansion would cost $1.15 billion because of rising material expenses, and suggested that board members consider delaying remodeling two patient towers at Palomar Medical Center.

Covert said Tuesday that was still his recommendation, because it would give the district time to pay off or refinance revenue bonds that the district took out to finance other construction projects in the 1990s.

Covert said delaying the remodeling and continuing to use the current facilities could be made easier by California’s Office of Statewide Hospital Planning and Development — which is considering a new method to determine to what degree hospitals throughout the state are at risk from earthquakes.

State legislators spurred Palomar Pomerado’s current expansion plans in 1999 when they approved a law requiring all acute-care hospitals to be able to withstand magnitude 6 earthquakes by 2008, and magnitude 7 quakes by 2030.

The district won an extension until 2013 when it decided to rebuild old portions of its hospitals to the magnitude 7 levels rather than retrofit.

Covert said Tuesday that the 2013 extension could be pushed off until 2020 if the state agency adopts a new software program that would re-evaluate the vulnerability of hospitals all around California.

“That would make it easier for us to extend out (timewise) in the use of our present facilities,” he said.

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