Palomar Hospital Condition Has Been Upgraded

A $35-million expansion of Palomar Medical Center in Escondido is virtually complete, and its underlying significance may have been best voiced as an aside by a tour guide.

“A few years ago, we weren’t up there with Scripps and Sharp,” said Pat Rarus, a spokeswoman for the Palomar-Pomerado Hospital District, referring to Scripps Memorial Hospital in La Jolla and Sharp Memorial Hospital in San Diego. “But now we are within the level of medical care of any hospital in San Diego County.”

The chief of the hospital’s medical staff, Dr. Wayne Miller, is even more unabashed in his assessment:

“With this expansion, we’re now going to be ahead of every other hospital in the county.”

First in a Two-Phase Project

Indeed, a city that has the largest regional shopping center in the county and perhaps the most architecturally striking City Hall of any city in the county now has a hospital to match.

The expansion is actually the first phase of a two-phase project. By the spring of 1990, a new south wing to the hospital will open, featuring a 26-bed obstetrics unit and a rehabilitation unit nearly five times larger than the existing one.

The current phase will add relatively few hospital beds, which is not the immediate area of concern to hospitals in the county anyway, given relatively low patient census rates regionwide. At Palomar, the number of beds will increase by 44, to 318. (The hospital is licensed for 306 beds but uses only 272.)

But administrators say the hospital will be better equipped than ever to deal with the more severely stricken, with more beds dedicated to those in critical condition who need constant monitoring by both nurses and machinery.

Specific improvements at the hospital, which opened in 1950 with 37 beds, range from basic to high-tech:

- A new garage, increasing the amount of parking spaces from 700 to 980, and a new entrance and main lobby with an adjoining, informal coffee shop, in contrast to the more traditional institutional cafeterias that serve many hospitals.

- A 23-bed emergency room instead of the crammed, 15-bed emergency room that had served the facility and which was considered by its doctors as perhaps the oldest and most outdated in the county, despite its accreditation as a trauma center.

The new emergency room features a trauma room capable of handling two patients at a time, and treatment rooms dedicated to pediatric care, bone injuries and eyes, ears, nose and throat problems.

- A separate but adjoining emergency room for less-stricken, walk-in patients. Administrators say the cost for treatment in that 24-hour emergency clinic will be competitive with other, private emergency clinics in the area.

- An increase in the number of operating rooms from six to 11, including an additional open-heart surgery suite, a spinal surgery suite and an operating room dedicated exclusively to trauma emergencies. That operating room comes to the relief of other surgeons who were frustrated because they had difficulty scheduling their own surgeries, and then were bumped by emergency surgeries.

- An operating recovery room three times larger than the old one, a pharmacy twice as large as before, and a more spacious laboratory.

- An increase from 20 to 28 in the number of critical-care beds, all arranged in pod-like fashion around central nursing stations that have clear, open views of their patients through glass partitions.

And there is more, such as additional observation and examination rooms throughout the hospital, including one dedicated exclusively to the study of sleep disorders; an entire floor of 32 beds with an enhanced level of care because data on patients’ conditions will be automatically relayed to the nursing station; and about $5 million in new equipment, ranging from a cardiac catheterization bi-plane X-ray unit that uses a computer image instead of film to patient rooms in the intensive-care unit with hideaway, swing-out toilets tucked in cabinets.

Nurses Are Excited

The new X-ray machine will allow technicians who track the dye used in catheterization procedures to view the patient from two directions, instead of having to repeat the troublesome procedure to acquire the second view.

“And those toilets might not sound too exciting for the general public because the patients in those rooms normally would depend on bedpans,” said assistant hospital administrator Susan Hurley. “But this is real exciting for the nursing staff.”

Miller, the chief of the medical staff, is also chief of cheerleaders.

“The Palomar Medical Center has had an outstanding medical staff for many years. Our true effectiveness, however, has been limited in part by a very outdated physical plant. This new facility will provide us with an opportunity to utilize our training and talents to the fullest.”

Not unlike a homeowner who treasures more space, the medical staff at Palomar will benefit not only from state-of-the-art equipment but also simply more room in which to function.

In the old operating rooms, Miller said, surgeons literally were bumping into each other and their equipment because of the cramped quarters. “The new heart (operating) room is bigger than my home,” Miller said with a laugh.

Construction of the expanded facility is in its mop-up and testing stages. The additions will open in phases through January.