Hospital closures. Nurse shortages. Masses of uninsured. At present, much of the conversation about health care is likely to be dominated by these challenges. Los Angeles County particularly has been under siege, most notably due to the closing of hospitals. But the March 25 opening of Kaiser Panorama City Medical Center’s new facility is a welcome offset to the often bleak picture that is painted of the regional health care market. “This is really, to my knowledge, the first substantial increase in emergency room capacity in the San Fernando Valley in recent memory,” said Kaiser Panorama’s Executive Director Dennis Benton. “A number of hospitals have closed. Several years ago, Granada Hills Hospital, which is near here, closed. The old Valley hospital closed, so the capacity of the area in terms of both inpatient beds and, even more importantly, emergency room capacity decreased.” This doesn’t mean that Kaiser has bid adieu to the old building, though. The first three floors of the old facility will be used for outpatient services, with a concourse attaching it the new building, according to spokeswoman Laura Gallardo. Located just south of its predecessor, construction on the new building began in 2003. The new building is substantially larger, allowing it to absorb some of the impact of area hospital closures. The new facility will also have advanced technology, increased seismic safety and more private rooms and parking. Benton discussed the facility’s other attributes as well as how his background uniquely equips him to oversee it. Question: Describe the experience of overseeing a completely new hospital facility. Answer: Well, it’s a once in a lifetime opportunity. Relatively few hospitals are being built across the country. It’s certainly the first time I’ve done it and almost certainly will be the last. It’s been exhilarating; it’s been a tremendous amount of work. The logistics of the construction and then the preparation for licensure and the preparations for the move-in have all been very time consuming, very intensive, but at the same time very exciting. Q: When did you take on this role? A: I’ve been executive director here since November. I’ve been with KP for a little over five years. Q: Describe the process of being named executive director. A: The first four years I was with KP, I was the business strategy and finance leader for the Valley service area. I was actually based here at Panorama City. I was very familiar with Pan City. Then, during most of 2007, I changed jobs, and I was assistant administrator of support services at Woodland Hills Medical Center. During a three month period in early ’06, the director of hospital operations for this [Panorama City] facility was on medical leave and I replaced him as acting DHO, which is the title that’s now executive director, so I had some experience acting as administrator of the hospital. I also was very familiar with the hospital. I’d been part of the transition team for the new hospital since day one, so it just seemed like a natural fit. Q: Name the advantages and disadvantages of overseeing a new hospital. A: We’re vacating about 260,000 square feet in the existing building and moving into 400,000 square feet, so everything is bigger. The operating rooms are bigger to accommodate new technology. The radiation suites are bigger to accommodate new technology. Patient rooms are bigger, so that we can allow families to stay overnight, if need be. The waiting rooms are bigger. Now the challenge we’re going from a very tight environment and a circular environment and a vertical environment to more of a horizontal, rectangular orientation in the new building. Shape may not seem like much, but it makes a big difference, especially to the nurses and all of the support personnel who deliver supplies and food and things like that. They have to learn new ways to do their jobs. There’s been a lot of training to orient people to the new hospital. How do you respond to a Code Blue? Infant abduction is another one. We’ve actually got a little doll, and if somebody tries to escape with this doll which is marked with a tag it sets off the alarms. We’ve also done several mock moves. How do we get the patients safely from the current building to the right bed in the new building? There are staff and physicians stationed all along the transportation route so that if there is any kind of event along the way, we’ll be able to respond immediately. Q: After the opening, then what? A: Exactly a month after opening, we’re going to have our grand opening ceremony April 25th and 26th. The 26th will be open to the general public. The hospital will be in operation by that point, so we’re not talking about tours through the facility, but the roof of the parking structure next to the hospital will have big tents set up and, for the public, we’ll have some food and health displays. Shortly after that, sometime in May, we’ll be increasing the acuity level of our neonatal intensive care unit. We’ll have the capability to take smaller, sicker infants than we do now. After that, over the summer in July, we finish our KP Health Connect, which is our electronic medical records system as well as our overall information system. A doctor anywhere within KP will have access to the complete medical record of any Kaiser Permanente member anywhere in the country; so, if you were to injure yourself in San Diego and have an X-ray, and you lived here and came back here the next day and saw your primary care physician, he could look and see that X-ray on his screen in his office. Q: Discuss the vision of the new hospital. Who had input? A: At least four years ago, we started a hospital transition activation team, and the work of this team was to figure out how the workflow is going to be accomplished in the new hospital. That team consisted of nurses, both management and labor, support services staff, information technology staff, administrators, physicians, you name it, so it was very much a team effort.
