Dignity Health estimates Elk Grove hospital will cost at least $327 million to build
Dignity Health estimates that it will spend roughly $327 million to construct a new 200,000-square-foot hospital in Elk Grove that will replace south Sacramento’s Methodist Hospital, Methodist President Phyllis Baltz said Wednesday.
Baltz, along with other Dignity and government leaders, formally announced the hospital at a morning event looking over the field that will be the facility’s future of home. It will be built off Elk Grove Boulevard, between the Costco warehouse club and the company’s outpatient center and medical office building on Wymark Drive.
“Decades of experience have been invested to plan a hospital that will meet the needs of Elk Grove’s residents now and in the future,” Baltz said. “This first phase of development will include a 200,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art, 100-bed hospital and it will be equipped with the latest technology and designed with all private rooms for every patient and amenities that will support healing and expedite care.”
The hospital, expected to open in 2026, will offer emergency services, operating rooms, an intensive care unit, women’s health services, diagnostic imaging, pharmacy, laboratory, respiratory and physical therapy, Baltz said. There’s also room to expand the facility on the 28-acre campus in Elk Grove.
Methodist Hospital required a significant seismic retrofit to continue operating once new mandates go into effect in 2030, Baltz said, so Dignity opted to close it and build a new hospital in Elk Grove. The future home of the hospital is just a five-mile drive from Methodist.
In an interview last month with The Sacramento Bee, Baltz said she was not certain what the name of the new hospital will be or what would become of the Methodist structure.
Many Elk Grove residents have sought care at Methodist over its 45-year history, noted Baltz and civic leaders. Elk Grove Mayor Steve Ly recalled spending nearly three weeks at Methodist about 20 years ago when his father was sick. The medical team there saved his dad’s life, Ly said.
City Councilwoman Stephanie Nguyen spoke about how impressed she was with the technology that aided in the delivery of her two children at Methodist Hospital, at 7500 Hospital Drive in south Sacramento.
“Equipment was coming up from the ceilings from the sides, from the floor. I would have thought Optimus Prime was going to deliver this baby,” Nguyen said in a reference to the self-configuring robotic life-form popularized in the “Transformers” television shows and movies.
Nguyen, who works in workforce development, said she was also pleased at the diversity of the workforce at Methodist and by assurances from Baltz that staff at the Elk Grove hospital will reflect the diversity of the community.
Ly said Dignity gets the Elk Grove culture and reflects the community’s values. The new hospital, he added, will be the culmination of work done over a decade by city leaders and staff.
“Our city recognized the important role that health care plays in our community,” Ly said. “In the economy, access to health care is a vital quality of life component upon which our residents, institutions and businesses rely. Elk Grove has long prioritized the health care industry and the building of facilities like hospitals and medical offices as paths to investment and job creation in our city.”
Elk Grove leaders also have been working with leaders of California Northstate University to build a hospital, but residents have voiced concerns about its size, location and potential for flooding.
