Kaiser Permanente Fontana Medical Center

Located on the southern end of the Kaiser Permanente Fontana medical campus, the new 490,000-sf, seven-story teaching hospital and inpatient tower replaces an existing main hospital, some of which will be converted for outpatient use. With more than 500 physicians and 4,400 support staff serving more than 440,000 members, the 314-private-bed hospital includes a 28-private-bed neonatal intensive care unit and a 51-room emergency department. More than 20 specialty services are available in the new tower, including a cardiac catheterization lab, labor and delivery suites, and a pediatric intensive care unit. Cardiac surgery services will be added in 2014. The hospital also has extensive imaging services, including CT scan rooms, fluoroscopy, general radiology, and an MRI.

An extensive redesign of Kaiser Permanente’s hospital diagnostic and treatment block template improved pedestrian circulation and wayfinding, while increasing efficiency and capacity within the current footprint. For example, the new facility needed 51 emergency department (ED) rooms, but the existing template was designed with 28 rooms. A redesign of the entire first-floor diagnostic and treatment block—comprised of the ED and imaging department—resulted in a reconfiguration of the ED from "neighborhoods" to an "avenues and streets" model. This allows for better segregation by patient acuity in the four streets, while allowing for more efficient patient and staff flow along along the main circulation path, the “avenue.”

The new structure is located just 25 feet from a medical office building and 70 feet from other medical facilities, which made construction challenging. The hospital is connected to two existing medical office buildings by a second-story pedestrian bridge and an underground pedestrian tunnel.

Building information modeling enabled contractors to prefabricate 60 percent of the plumbing, HVAC piping, ductwork, and electrical systems off site and deliver them to the construction site just in time for installation. Prefabrication, combined with Kaiser Permanente’s template design and design-assist delivery method—which the design and construction team employed to complete the project’s design documents before construction began—allowed the hospital to be completed four months ahead of schedule and more than $35 million under budget.

In addition to the $320 million hospital tower, the project includes a 23,000-sf central utility plant and a 50,000-sf hospital support building containing medical offices, radiology, a pharmacy, and a specialty clinic, for a total project cost of $420 million, including site work. Other work entailed a bridge and tunnel tie-ins, a new member and doctor parking lot, and off-site improvements.