Simi Valley Hospital converting to all private rooms.

With the opening of its new wing months away, Simi Valley Hospital is recruiting physicians to staff its new departments, ordering new equipment and getting ready to retrain its staff.

The 170-room patient tower is scheduled to open later this year. All of its rooms will be private, and it will have room for new cardiology and level II neonatal intensive care units.

The median age of the hospital's surrounding residents is 35, said Simi Valley Hospital chief executive officer Margaret Peterson, so the hospital needs to be prepared to serve the needs of both the young and old.

"Because our median age is right in the middle, we have to have services for those individuals that are 35 plus and that are 35 below," said Peterson. "Young people use the ER and obstetrics, and when you get into the older populations, you need gastroenterology and cardiology."

Peterson said the hospital is working on setting up a cardiac catheterization laboratory, which is the first step in setting up a full cardiology center. The new neonatal intensive care unit will serve patients having multiple births or children that will need intensive care immediately upon birth.

The hospital will need additional physicians to staff its new units, and more nurses as its intensive care unit more than doubles in size. Peterson said the hospital is stepping up its recruitment now in order to meet its eventual need, and planning to retrain its staff to handle the changes that new departments and a new patient tower will bring.

Expansion at the hospital has been long overdue as the region's population has exploded, Peterson said.

"We were built in 1965 when the (region) has about 8,000 people," said Peterson. "In 1985 we had the addition of the emergency room, radiology ... we had about 80,000 people living in Simi Valley. Now we have 150,000 plus."

Private suites

Simi Valley, which will demolish two older buildings and portions of a third when the new tower is complete, is also taking the opportunity to turn all of its patient rooms into private suites.

"Our efficiency in being able to use these rooms will be much more enhanced than what we have now," Peterson said.

Hospital staff will no longer have to worry about making sure all the patients in a room are the same gender or isolating a contagious patient, Peterson said.

Converting from semi-private to private rooms is something most hospitals are planning. Peterson said that Simi Valley is fortunate enough to be building a new tower that the hospital doesn't have to renovate its rooms in a piecemeal fashion.

Jan Emerson, spokesperson for the California Hospital Association, said hospitals across the country are converting their rooms into completely private suites. In the 1940s and 50s, plentiful federal funds fueled a hospital construction boom that saw patients grouped together in large wards. Then, during the 60s, 70s and 80s hospitals started to build semi-private rooms for between two and four patients. In the 21st century, Emerson said, private rooms are a better option.

"There's going to be a massive hospital construction boom as hospitals come into compliance with earthquake safety laws," Emerson said. "Forty percent of them are going to have to be retrofit or rebuilt. If you're going to do that you also want to think about what is appropriate for 21st century health care delivery."

In the past, Emerson said, health care companies would make patients pay more for a private room. Now, health plans pay a negotiated discounted rate to hospitals regardless of the room a patient stays in, and Medicare pays hospitals based on the diagnosis and treatment.

"There's really not that much difference any more in health care reimbursement," Emerson said. "It's not more expensive to design a private room than a semi-private room."

"There's not really an impact on staffing, and it helps flexibility," Emerson added.

The 146,000 square-foot patient care wing will cost Simi Valley Hospital $35 million. The Federal Emergency Management Agency is providing $16 million for damage suffered in the Northridge Earthquake. The hospital's owner, Adventist Health, has committed $10 million and the Simi Valley Hospital Foundation is raising the remaining $9 million.