Scripps Health Opens New Cardiovascular Institute

Scripps Health (San Diego, CA, USA) has inaugurated the Prebys Cardiovascular Institute, which will serve as a center for heart disease treatment, research, and graduate medical education.

Located on the campus of Scripps Memorial Hospital La Jolla (CA, USA), the seven-story, 35,500 square meter tower, built at a cost of USD 456 million, will include 108 inpatient beds in private rooms equipped with LCD TV monitors that can also display clinical images, 59 intensive care beds, and six operating rooms for interventional cardiology, diagnostic testing, and digital imaging. Advance cardiac catheterization labs, including two state-of-the-art hybrid surgical suites, can be used for either catheterization procedures or surgeries.

The center also includes design elements to enhance patient safety, such as nursing station access to inpatient rooms, an advanced paging system, safety features for inpatient rooms and showers, antimicrobial surfaces and finishes throughout the facility, access for patients, visitors, and staff to gardens and inpatient room views of a rooftop garden, in-room wireless internet access, and controllable lighting systems. The building also includes a sterile processing department and a planned emergency department (ED) on the ground floor which is expected to commence operations in June 2016.

“Today, we celebrate the opening of one of the country's top cardiovascular institutes right here in San Diego, which offers the most advanced heart care available not just for patients in our community but for heart patients everywhere,” said Chris Van Gorder, president of Scripps Health. “We designed this institute to be centered around our patients and their needs, creating an innovative environment for collaboration among some of the nation's most brilliant physicians, for ground-breaking research by world-class scientists, and for the diagnosis and treatment of the most challenging heart conditions."

Scripps Health is a nonprofit health care system that includes four hospitals and 19 outpatient facilities, treating half a million patients annually through 2,600 affiliated physicians. It was founded in 1924 by philanthropist Ellen Browning Scripps while recovering from a broken hip in a poorly equipped sanitarium in La Jolla. She then established Scripps Memorial Hospital and the Scripps Metabolic Clinic. The Prebys Cardiovascular Institute is named after Conrad Prebys, a real estate developer who donated USD 45 million for the project.

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