Back to Press Room

•           Bakersfield Memorial Hospital expands services
•           Would be a ‘hospital within a hospital’

Bakersfield Memorial Hospital is looking into adding a children’s hospital to its campus. The proposed Children’s Medical Center would be a “hospital within a hospital” and include a neonatal intensive care unit; an expanded pediatric in-patient department; a pediatric intensive care unit; and out-patient clinics. The neonatal intensive care unit is already in place, having recently re-opened at Bakersfield Memorial, increasing its patient capacity from 12 to 19.

Memorial plans to upgrade and expand its Pediatrics Department from 12 to 24 acute pediatric beds. “Significant work will be required to install medical gases, suction and private bathrooms to the unit,” it says. The cost is estimated at $2 million. The proposed pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) would be the only dedicated PICU in the southern San Joaquin Valley. The eight-bed unit would allow seriously ill and injured children to remain close to home for specialized care, rather than being transferred to hospitals more than a hundred miles away, Memorial says. Those hospitals are either in Madera, near Fresno, or in Los Angeles. The hospital says the need for a children’s hospital in Bakersfield is there. Bakersfield and Kern County have experienced significant growth over the last ten years, with the pediatric population growing proportionately to about 175,000 (ages 17 and younger), it says.

http://www.centralvalleybusinesstimes.com/stories/001/?ID=13098