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Thursday, Mar 28, 2024

New Projects Move Glendale Adventist

Glendale Adventist Hospital is looking to its future as much as it is focusing on the past as it celebrates its 100th anniversary. Scott Reiner, chief executive officer of Glendale Adventist, said that investments in a new hospital wing and cutting edge technology that is bringing patients from across Southern California are preparing the hospital to provide the best possible care to the community in the coming years. In many ways, the hospital’s founder, Ellen G. White would hardly recognize what has become the largest hospital in the San Fernando Valley. In 1905, White opened what was then called Glendale Sanitarium. In addition to medical treatments, patients were also prescribed treatment that is now preferred by stressed-out spa customers, such as hydrotherapy, massage, nutrition counseling and exercise. “In a lot of ways, Ellen White was ahead of her time,” said Tony Yang, the hospital’s director of marketing and communications. “There are wellness centers popping up everywhere these days, but she was recommending a good diet, fresh air and exercise 100 years ago.” Hospital stays, now as short as possible, stretched over 30 or 40 days a century ago. Its centennial celebration now complete, Reiner and the hospital staff are counting on new innovations and a state-of-the-art patient wing to keep its services modern. When the new, 7-story patient care tower is completed in 2009, it will increase the number of license beds at the hospital from its current 448 to over 500. Adding space is critical, said Reiner, as the hospital is treating 80 more patients every day than it was seeing four years ago. “We’re meeting (seismic) regulations for the state of California,” said Reiner. “But what we’re really doing is preparing for the next 15 to 20 years. The patient care tower has been under planning for five years, and what goes into it is really the core of our future. We’ll have an expanded emergency room, we’re adding all new operating rooms and cardiac catheterization labs and other capabilities.” The new tower will cost about $106 million dollars by the time construction costs are added to the cost of equipment. The building is being financed through a combination of grants from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, fundraising and cash on hand at the hospital. Adjacent to the tower will be a new parking structure with 500 spaces. A separate project, an investor-owned medical office building should be ready for its first users this coming spring. In addition to providing office spaces for dozens of physicians, there will also be a 16,000-square-foot ambulatory surgical center on the first floor of the building. To improve hospital operations, Glendale Adventist now has a digital, wireless medical record keeping system throughout the hospital, which is in use by nurses, dieticians, physical therapists and physician hospital wide. Some of the hospital’s most valuable investments have been in new treatments, however. Glendale is now one of a few hospitals in the greater Los Angeles area to do stereotactic radiology surgery, which allows surgeons to treat tumors with much less damage to peripheral tissue than in the past. Even rarer is its radiation angiography suite, which allows physicians to de-clot a brain tumor using a much safer method. “We’re the only hospital in Southern California other than the academic center that has this capability. We’re really providing academic medical services in a regional or community center,” said Reiner. “If a patient presents here, they go into a lab and the physicians inserts a wire from the groin all the way into the brain and retrieves (the clot).” Most community hospitals use a method that involves introducing an enzyme into the brain, which can have unexpected consequences and must be done within 45 minutes. The window for treatment using Glendale’s treatment is eight hours. “Because of the capabilities and technology we can receive and handle patients on a regional basis,” said Reiner. “We’re doing more of this than most of the academic centers do.”

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