The construction activity that will predominate at UC Davis Medical Center for the next several years is designed to achieve dual purposes: to comply with a state law governing seismic safety for hospitals, and to satisfy a pressing need for more space and modernized facilities.

Like all of the approximately 470 acute-care hospitals in California, UC Davis Medical Center is working to comply with SB 1953, which outlines sweeping seismic safety standards. The law requires that, by 2008, all general acute-care inpatient buildings at risk of collapsing during a strong earthquake must be rebuilt, retrofitted or closed.

As part of its compliance plan for SB 1953, the medical center will demolish the North-South Wing of the hospital. Much of the new construction is required to provide replacement space for the functions in the North-South Wing.

At the same time, the half-dozen major projects that will be in progress through 2008 will address a variety of urgent needs that will permit the medical center to maintain its role as an indispensable resource for the Sacramento region’s health and well-being. The projects will:

• provide additional, critically needed hospital beds, operating rooms and space for the emergency department;
• provide for the medical center’s energy needs;
• establish a state-of-the-art medical library;
• provide classrooms, conference space and other facilities to improve and expand educational opportunities for medical students, residents, nurses and other health-care professionals;
• expand the UC Davis Cancer Center to accommodate new equipment, additional patients and doctors; and
• construct quarters for a new research center being established with the help of $40 million from the National Science Foundation.

The medical center must accommodate an increasing demand for inpatient services through additional beds and operating rooms. The increased demand for surgical cases has been so dramatic that elective surgeries must be performed on weekends and evenings.

The medical center also has been operating at capacity for several years. On occasion, it has been forced to turn away all but the most seriously ill and injured patients because the hospital is completely full. The problem is likely to worsen with a growing population, growing numbers of uninsured patients who crowd emergency rooms because they cannot obtain care elsewhere, and a severe nursing shortage that is straining area hospitals.