The new Palmdale Regional Medical Center has not opened its doors yet but the hallways are active as the staff prepares for the arrival of patients. After months of delays, the final inspection by state officials of the medical facility begins on Dec. 6 and will take three days to complete. Staff and administration are tested on policies and procedures, training on equipment and may get called on a disaster code or code blue (cardiac arrest) to see their response. “When they leave on Wednesday (Dec. 8) we anticipate they will give the blessing to open,” said Robert Trautman, the medical center’s CEO. The Palmdale Regional Medical Center is the first new medical facility to open in the Antelope Valley in some 20 years. Its impact goes beyond just providing additional beds and a way to keep residents from going elsewhere for their medical care. As the medical center was built on a hill overlooking Palmdale Boulevard, private developers began construction on medical office space to meet the needs of the doctors working out of the larger facility. The medical center opens up a business niche that had not existed before in Palmdale. In recent years much of the new commercial building in the city centered on retail and restaurants and creating service industry jobs. With the medical center comes professional jobs that in turn require their own support services located nearby. “That is the synergy that a full service hospital will bring,” said Palmdale Mayor James Ledford. Building and opening the full service hospital has been a long road. Universal Health Services Inc. first visited the area in 2001 and the following year purchased Lancaster Community Hospital as a way to get a foothold in the area as it made plans to build in Palmdale. The city offered land, and infrastructure and traffic improvements as incentives. Lancaster Community Hospital will close with the opening of Palmdale Regional Medical Center. According to Trautman, the site will be sold to an owner that plans to demolish the structure and build a skilled nursing facility. Closure of hospital Despite being one of the fastest growing parts of Los Angeles County, the medical care offered in the Antelope Valley has not kept up over the years. A hospital in Palmdale was closed in 1996 and the county-owned and operated High Desert Hospital ceased providing inpatient services in 2003 and became an outpatient clinic only. That left Lancaster Community and Antelope Valley Hospital as the only full-service hospitals and explains why 35 percent of admissions of people from zip codes in the Antelope Valley happened in other areas, primarily the San Fernando Valley and West Los Angeles. The completion date of the medical center moved from the end of 2009 and then to early 2010 and finally to late 2010. The delay came after the state’s Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development required that additional fire dampeners be put in the walls and 450 more smoke detectors be installed. After the safety devices were put in they then needed to be tested. If the final inspection goes as Trautman would like, the emergency room at Lancaster Community will close at 6 a.m. on Dec. 11 as the one at the Palmdale medical center opens. The 35-bed emergency room will be the largest in the Antelope Valley and Trautman expects patients will begin filling it rather quickly. With all private rooms, the medical center can be more efficient and more marketable. At opening, there will be 121 beds. Another 36 beds become available in January, and at full build-out in 2012 the capacity will be 239 beds. In comparison, Lancaster Community has 117 beds. Antelope Valley Hospital has 420 beds. When it comes to employees, the new medical center will have 1,100 when built out, nearly the double the 570 working at Lancaster Community. With a boxy exterior, the medical center has a color scheme of earth tones. A donated player piano sits in the main lobby. The interior is spacious with wide hallways and multiple visitor seating areas. “It gives a good family feel,” said Chief Operating Officer Karen Faulis. “It encourages family to be there with their loved one and assist when needed.” Meanwhile, outside the hospital private developers had their own ideas of how to capitalize on its presence. Nearby centers RamseyShilling Cos. built the first phase of its Palmdale Corporate Center that includes medical offices. Martin Properties, based in Westlake Village, broke ground on the Challenger Business Park in late 2007 just across the street from the east entrance to the hospital. And Ensemble Real Estate constructed the three-story Palmdale Medical Plaza I on the campus with a connecting walkway to the medical center. Ensemble has built medical office space for other Universal Health Services hospitals. The Palmdale medical building is currently about 20 percent occupied and that figure is expected to rise with the opening of the medical center, said Roni Gould, an associate partner with Ensemble. “Obviously the building is there to serve the hospital and there are not a lot of people to move in without it being open,” Gould said. Both the hospital and the medical office projects were built during one of the worst markets for real estate and it remains tough to fill space, said Michael Dettling, the director of the health care real estate group at RamseyShilling. In the next six to 12 months after the medical center has been opened and existing leases for medical space in other parts of Palmdale and Lancaster expire the corporate center space will be seen as an attractive alternative. The challenge, however, is that because the building is new the lease rates are higher, Dettling said. “It’s been a tough sell to bring them to our project from the less expensive older space,” Dettling said.
All Ready
