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Thursday, Mar 28, 2024

Cedars-Sinai Opens Offices in Tarzana

Cedars-Sinai on Jan. 29 opened its flagship medical offices in the San Fernando Valley, marking the hospital’s latest expansion into the region. The 40,000-square-foot location at 18133 Ventura Blvd. in Tarzana is around the corner from the area’s hospital, which Cedars also has a stake in thanks to a joint venture with Providence St. Joseph Health. Providence maintains controlling interest in the hospital, with Cedars owning 49 percent. “The San Fernando Valley in general and Tarzana in particular are vital to the vision we have for making Cedars-Sinai’s care available,” Thomas Priselac, chief executive of Cedars-Sinai, said at the grand opening of the offices. “It does complement our new relationship with Providence St. Joseph Health and with the Providence Cedars-Sinai Tarzana Medical Center. The pairing of two vital organizations for the San Fernando Valley with our combined resources, I believe, is really going to enhance the continuum of care that could be offered here to patients in the San Fernando Valley.” Cedars has 11 other office locations in the Valley area. The Tarzana location, dealing mostly in cancer care, has four floors with radiology and diagnostic imaging on the first floor, surgery and imaging on the second floor, medical oncology on the third floor and internal medicine and surgery on the fourth. Orthopedic specialists and internal medicine will be available soon, Cedars said. “There is so much that Cedars offers now in this building. You get your imaging with Radnet, be seen immediately by a specialist, get a diagnosis,” said Dr. Nimmi Kapoor, surgical oncologist at Cedars’ Breastlink Women’s Imaging. “I do the surgeries sometimes on the fourth floor because there’s a surgery center upstairs. You can see medical oncology on the third floor. It’s complete, comprehensive care.” For the infusion center and exam rooms on the third floor, Cedars sought a new design to enhance communication, patient comfort and efficiency, according to Suzan Ballentine, operations manager for the Tarzana offices. Lab tests can be brought up to the doctor within 10 minutes, Ballentine said, facilitating a better patient visit with less waiting. “They’re able to go into the exam room with the patient and have the results right in front of them, and they can tell the patient what to do from there,” added Ballentine. “It’s all done here, it’s all done right away.” The 22-bed infusion bay offers a lot of natural light for cancer patients and their families. Cedars borrowed an open office plan with bays being secluded behind short walls while still giving nurses a way to monitor infusions happening on the floor. “The patient is here, the family is coming and has a place to sit with them. We tried to make it so that they had everything they needed here: access to charge their phones, computers, whatever they bring with them. We tried to make it as cozy as we could,” said Ballentine, referring to the infusion bays. In addition to chemotherapy, the infusion center also helps patients in need of an iron infusion or phlebotomy services. The second floor houses the Breastlink center, led by Kapoor.

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