The new 288-room hospital is situated on top of a hill in Escondido. The 11-storey hospital also includes plans for a total capacity of 600 beds to meet the current and future needs of the Inland North County District’s growing population. The new facility will also provide expanded trauma and emergency services, heart surgery, neurosurgery and vascular services.
Designed by CO Architects, the facility resembles a luxury resort. Spanning 740,000 square feet, the new Palomar Medical Center was designed to provide a healing environment. The architect took inputs from physicians, staff and district leaders.
A Green wavy roof has been incorporated in the design. The 1.5-acre green roof on top of the surgical suites floor reduces heat reflectance and absorption inside the building. The roof garden was designed to mimic the surrounding hillside landscape and features large skylights and solar tubes that direct natural light into diagnostic and treatment areas below. Accessible outdoor terraces are featured on every floor that will bring patients and staff closer to nature.
The new hospital has been designed to adapt to future technologies and innovations. The advanced surgery and procedures department will house 11 operating rooms and four interventional radiology/cardiac catheterization suites. The floor was designed to allow the creation of larger or smaller operating rooms in the future.
The new Trauma Center and Emergency Department at the hospital will feature larger than average treatment rooms and is equipped with state-of-the-art imaging and specialized clinical equipment, making it one of the most advanced emergency/trauma floors in the US. A dedicated trauma elevator is featured that will deliver patients from the rooftop heliport to the operating room within seconds. The two trauma suites can be expanded for multiple trauma patients. The Emergency Department will have 48 treatment rooms, which is 15 more than currently available at the downtown hospital. In addition, there are six critical care treatment rooms and one orthopedic treatment room.
All private patient rooms have designed with utmost flexibility. Spanning 320 square feet, each patient room is divided into a staff zone, patient zone and hygiene zone. Centralised nursing stations have been replaced with distributed nursing or “alcove” workstations outside of every patient room. This enables quicker care.
Each workstation is wired as a communications hub for maintaining electronic medical records, which will be accessible to physicians and staff through a secure wireless network, providing current and complete information about each patient. It has been designed to function even in the event of a power loss or natural disaster.
The 56-acre campus will expand in phases.
