Work has begun on the $3.74B UC Davis Medical Center project in Sacramento, including a 14-story California Tower and pavilion to enhance patient care. The tower, opening in 2030, will feature modern facilities and flexibility for emergencies, creating jobs and boosting the community.
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A groundbreaking ceremony was held on July 22 in downtown Sacramento, Calif., at the UC Davis Medical Center complex as the facility kicked off a major expansion of the hospital complex.
UC Davis Health hosted the event to begin construction on its new 14-story California Tower and accompanying five-level pavilion to delive superior care for Northern Californians and meet the evolving needs of the greater Sacramento region, which includes the nearby city of Davis, home to the university.
"The addition of the California Tower to UC Davis Medical Center is a testament to our innovative forward thinking across our health system and main campus," UC Davis Chancellor Gary S. May said at the groundbreaking. "This project will position our researchers, students, faculty and staff to meet and adapt to regional health care needs for the next 50 years."
May spoke in the construction zone to an audience of university leaders, elected officials, project collaborators and construction and facilities management workers.
The massive $3.74 billion California Tower portion of the project was first approved by the UC Board of Regents in January 2022, and, when completed and open for patients in 2030, will be part of the Sacramento region's most advanced medical facility. The new hospital and pavilion will join the medical center's existing University and Davis Towers.
The new tower will add nearly 1 million sq. ft. of space to the eastern side of the existing UC Davis medical complex. Among its features will be modern operating rooms, an imaging center, innovative facilities for pharmacy and burn care units, and approximately 334 private rooms for patients.
David Lubarsky, UC Davis Health's CEO, noted that more than 250 rooms are being designed for greater flexibility in the event of a patient surge such as a pandemic, massive wildfire or other disaster.
"With the California Tower, we are building a new paradigm of patient care centered around how a health system can deliver tomorrow's health care today," he said.
"We are building into this new tower some of the lessons we learned from the recent pandemic. As an example, three out of four of the rooms in this new tower can be easily converted to fully functional intensive-care units if needed, tripling our ICU capacity."
When the California Tower is open for patients, Lubarsky added, it will continue the hospital's 150-year legacy of "caring for those who need it most, delivering superior patient outcomes while becoming more sustainable, and keeping our focus on improving health outcomes and equity."
Construction of the new hospital tower was done to replace parts of the medical center that must close due to California's seismic regulations, according to UC Davis Health. Hospitals across the state are upgrading their existing facilities or constructing new buildings that can withstand major earthquakes.
The 646-bed hospital — the largest in the Sacramento area — will have 675 to 700 inpatient beds when the project is expected to finish in six years.
Tower Project to Boost Community Employment
The California Tower project also is likely to create hundreds of construction jobs and thousands of new health-care positions for the surrounding community, just one of the greater Sacramento area's many benefits of being home to an anchor institution like UC Davis Medical Center.
Such institutions are place-based, mission-driven entities like universities and hospitals that leverage economic power alongside human and intellectual resources to improve the long-term health and social welfare of surrounding communities, UC Davis Health noted.
"The hospital tower we're breaking ground on today represents another pivotal investment in our city by UC Davis," Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg said. "Both this tower and the new Aggie Square innovation campus will create thousands of new, high-quality jobs and expand our ability to meet the health care needs of our residents."
In addition, UC Davis Health plans to help fuel the economic health and overall well-being of the neighborhoods surrounding its Sacramento campus by:
- Hiring and developing local workforce talent.
- Buying more goods and services from local vendors.
- • Investing in local projects that support vulnerable communities.
- Engaging employees to volunteer in local neighborhoods.
"This project further harnesses the advantages of UC Davis Medical Center being Sacramento's number one hospital and delivering nationally ranked care," Lubarsky said.
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