Sutter Health to Start Construction on Long-Planned $442 Million S.F. Expansion
Sutter Health is nearing the last phase of its long-planned build-out of its California Pacific Medical Center Mission Bernal hospital campus, with plans to break ground on a $442 million care center next summer.
The five-story, 129,000-square-foot medical office building will sit adjacent to Sutter’s existing 120-bed CPMC hospital at the corner of Cesar Chavez and Valencia streets, which was built in the place of the former St. Luke’s Hospital and officially opened in 2018.
Services in the new building will include ambulatory surgery and a center for brain health. The care center is expected to welcome its first patients in 2028.
The San Francisco Planning Commission was reviewing the project at an informational hearing Thursday.
The building’s construction represents Sutter’s final commitment under a 2013 development agreement with the city that allowed the nonprofit health care system to demolish and reconstruct the St. Luke’s campus and build its CPMC Van Ness Campus at the site of the former Cathedral Hill hotel. Sutter, headquartered in Sacramento, is Northern California’s largest health care system.
Sutter was required to submit a proposal for the new care center within five years of opening the larger Mission Bernal Campus. Christina Oh, president of Sutter’s greater San Francisco market, said that the building’s construction timeline was complicated as a result of the pandemic.
The care center was initially approved as a 86,400-square-foot facility, but Sutter moved to increase the amount of dedicated to patient care and the building’s lobby in 2017. San Francisco’s Boldt Company has been hired as the general contractor for the project.
Until the start of the pandemic in March 2020, the Mission Bernal hospital also housed labor and delivery services, which were moved to Sutter’s Van Ness hospital to utilize the space for COVID-19 surge planning. Those services will not return to the Mission Bernal Campus, Oh confirmed. She said Sutter will meet with the city next week to discuss this change in the context of its development agreement.
“The focus will be to keep obstetrics operations running the way they currently are — they did get consolidated over to the CPMC Van Ness Campus,” said Oh.
She added that Sutter plans to expand its primary care and women’s care services at the Monteagle building at 1580 Valencia St. on the Mission Bernal Campus.
Separately, Sutter recently opened a new “innovation center” at Pier 1, with a focus on health care tech and artificial intelligence.
Sutter President and CEO Warner Thomas said that Sutter is “doubling down on its commitment to make significant investments” that expand access to advanced specialty care.
“We’re proud to invest more than $440 million in the community, planned in partnership with our physician colleagues, to deliver comprehensive neurological and neurosurgical care, notable specialized programs, and all support, diagnostic and ambulatory surgery services in this new state-of-the-art care complex,” Thomas said.
Mayor London Breed said in a statement that “Sutter Health’s investment in the Mission Bernal Care Complex demonstrates renewed commitments that will create opportunity, help grow our economy, and strengthen the communities it will serve. I want to thank Sutter Health for their partnership and continued investment into San Francisco’s economy, jobs, and the future of our great City.”
The new facility will house the Ray Dolby Brain Health Center, which is currently located at Sutter’s Davies Campus on Castro Street and the Forbes Norris MDA/ALS Research and Treatment Center, which will relocate from the Van Ness Campus.
Having all of these services under one roof will create a “more convenient, coordinated experience,” said Oh. The hope is that this kind of coordinated care will reduce the time it takes to treat patients, which is currently estimated at between 60 and 180 days for appointments with specialists due to limited access.
Still to come are two neurological intervention suites that will be added to the larger hospital campus by 2027.
“It’s really important to us — if we are going to center patients with neurological issues at the care complex — to also treat advanced neurological conditions inside the Mission Bernal hospital,” said Oh, adding that the suites will be outfitted with biplane imaging equipment.
“That allows our providers to go inside the brain to treat aneurysms, brain bleeds and strokes,” she said. “It helps us to intervene both in advance or in an emergent situation.”
The new care facility will initially house 33 neurological and spine specialists, with Sutter seeking to hire an additional 85 specialists in the coming years.
Sutter said expanding its services throughout California will be a top priority over the next three years. It plans to open 25 ambulatory care centers by 2027 and add more than 160 hospital beds by next year.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/realestate/article/sutter-center-mission-bernal-19383912.php