UC Davis Health preparing to build $579 million outpatient surgery center on Sacramento campus
UC Davis Health plans to build a $579 million outpatient surgery center on its Sacramento campus by 2025, another piece of its ambitious expansion that also includes a new hospital tower and a rehabilitation hospital.
These projects come as the University of California, Davis, also moves forward with the multibillion-dollar Aggie Square innovation hub on the campus that aims to bring together researchers, industry partners, entrepreneurs and students in an innovation hub.
The new surgery center, approved by the UC Board of Regents in May, will have 12 major operating rooms, five minor procedure rooms and a number of imaging rooms. The facility is being planned in concert with the new hospital tower to ensure UC Davis Health will have enough operating rooms overall.
In a report to UC regents, UC Davis leaders said that the surgery center would allow them to move virtually all outpatient procedures out of the medical center and prepare for growth.
The existing spaces “are insufficient and lack the necessary beds and space to house complex outpatient surgeries that require overnight patient recovery and large modern operating suites to accommodate advanced technologies,” UC Davis leaders noted in their report. “Patient preparation and recovery areas are shared, which does not meet industry standards or patient expectations for privacy and is not optimal for patient safety. Operating suites are neither ideally sized nor adaptable.”
The hospital industry has been building more ambulatory surgery centers as studies have shown patients receive high-quality results at a lower cost than in hospitals. UC Davis has plans to build another ambulatory surgery center in Folsom, along with a micro-hospital and medical office building.
The new surgery center at UC Davis Health will sit across from the Lawrence J. Ellison Ambulatory Care Center and the Ernest E. Tschannen Eye Institute. UC Davis leaders noted that some physicians will practice out of the planned outpatient surgery center, easing pressure for clinical space in the Ellison outpatient facility.
While the project is officially named the Sacramento Ambulatory Surgery Center, UC Davis Health leaders often refer to it as the 48X Complex because it sits at the intersection of 48th and X street. The nomenclature has become increasingly popular for projects on Sacramento’s midtown grid where streets named for alphabets frequently cross numbered ones.
UC Davis Health plans to take on $300 million in debt to help cover the cost of construction.
This story was originally published June 2, 2022 at 5:25 AM.
