Sharp HealthCare Announces Plan to Build 108-Bed Women’s Hospital

Sharp HealthCare threw down a $46-million gauntlet for its competitors Thursday by announcing plans for a 108-bed women’s hospital next to Sharp Memorial Hospital.

Double the size of a similar facility that will open at Grossmont Hospital this fall, the Mary Birch Women’s Hospital will be the biggest free-standing women’s hospital in Southern California, Sharp HealthCare President Peter K. Ellsworth said.

The facility will be financed with $31 million in hospital bonds and a $15-million fund-raising drive by the Sharp Hospitals Foundation. That campaign already has received a $5-million donation from the Stephen and Mary Birch Foundation, the charity that also is financing the new Scripps Aquarium.

‘A Major Gift’

Ellsworth called the six-story women’s hospital “a major gift Sharp will be making to the community.”

It also will position Sharp to draw in more female patients, a marketing strategy that health care administrators are pursuing all over the country. Such techniques are particularly important in San Diego, where hospitals have been only about 60% occupied despite the area’s population growth.

A survey published this month in Modern Health Care magazine found that a third of U. S. hospitals have established women’s centers. In hospitals with more than 300 beds, the percentage is 68%, according to the survey by the National Research Corp. of Lincoln, Neb.

Women are sought after because research has shown them to be the primary decision-makers for a family’s health care, said Jan Frates, a private health care consultant in San Diego.

Pleasant Reason to Go to Hospital

“Having a baby is one of the few pleasant reasons why people go to a hospital, so if you have a woman who has a positive experience with your hospital in childbirth, then that person is likely to think warmly and fondly of your hospital and also to refer other people,” Frates said. “So that decision has the potential for driving a lot of other decisions down the line.”

Furthermore, pregnant women are choosy and so must be offered services they like, marketers have found. The Modern Health Care magazine survey found that, of women who hoped to have a child within the next two years, 84% already had a specific hospital in mind for the delivery.

As described Thursday by Sharp officials, the new hospital will incorporate a host of ideas that have proven popular with today’s mothers-to-be. These include routine “rooming in,” in which babies are kept with their mothers rather than in large nurseries. However, small nurseries will be situated on every floor to accommodate women who want to rest.

In addition, every woman who has a vaginal delivery will have her labor, delivery and recovery in a single room with a homelike atmosphere. The 22 rooms will be equipped to handle high-risk deliveries. In years past, women were shuttled from one room to another for each stage of childbirth.

In consideration of their emotional needs, women who have had stillbirths will be accommodated on a separate floor from women who had live births. Gynecological surgery patients also will be placed on that floor.

The 194,000-square-foot hospital will be situated just south of Sharp Memorial--which is just north of Mission Valley off California 163--between it and the rehabilitation center. It also will have:

- Nine operating rooms, including two for outpatient surgery.

- A 36-bed neonatal intensive care unit that can handle all but the most difficult cases.

- 108 adult beds, half in private rooms and half in semiprivate settings.

- Facilities for extensive prenatal care of women at high risk for having problem deliveries, and for testing for fetal defects. Ellsworth said fetal surgeries might eventually be done also.

- Non-maternity programs such as plastic surgery, mammography, premenstrual syndrome, menopause, stress management and parenting.

Double Size of Grossmont

The hospital will be more than double the size of the women’s center being constructed by Grossmont, which will have 48 adult beds. However, officials there say they are not worried about competition.

“San Diego County is growing, so we are basing our projections on the growth here in East County,” said Krista Abels, director of planning and marketing. “If we offer a very good service, the patients that are here won’t need to go to Sharp. I believe that there’s enough volume here in San Diego County that we can both coexist.”

Of about 44,000 babies born annually in San Diego County, Sharp delivers about 7,800, the highest number of any single hospital in the county. Nearby Scripps Memorial Hospital-La Jolla delivers about 2,000, and Grossmont delivers about 4,200. Sharp hopes with its women’s hospital to eventually raise its deliveries to 9,000 a year.

Hospitals expect they will continue to deliver babies of women who can afford no prenatal care but show up in labor at hospital emergency rooms. In San Diego last year, at least 3,264 such births occurred. These births are recognized as more likely to produce children with mental or physical defects.

The $87 million that Sharp and Grossmont are spending on women’s centers to attract paying patients does not directly address the issue of poor women who get no medical care during pregnancy. However, Grossmont is helping to establish a clinic in East County that will care for 10 to 15 poor pregnant women a month, Abels said. The hospital is seeking outside money but will finance the program itself if none is found, she said.

Comparable activities at Sharp so far are confined to membership and support of the Regional Perinatal System, which monitors the problem and lobbies to solve it, said Janelle Stichler, director of the Sharp Women’s Center.

The hospital will be named for Mary Birch, wife of the founder of Kennecott Copper Corp. The Birches maintained their West Coast residence at Rancho del Otay, between the Upper and Lower Otay reservoirs. Stephen Birch died in 1940, leaving behind the Delaware-based foundation.

Over the last five years, the foundation has donated more than $15 million to San Diego projects. That includes $6 million of the $8.2-million cost of a new aquarium at UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography.