Kaiser Permanente in Fresno is boosting access to emergency medical treatment.
“Here, with our acute care expansion, it includes the expansion of our emergency department,” said Tyler Hedden, the Senior Vice President. “Really doubling the size of our emergency department, previously 20 beds and now 40 beds.”
On Friday, Kaiser Permanente held a ribbon-cutting for its newly renovated emergency department.
The upgraded facility includes several intake rooms, specialized treatment areas, and expanded waiting space.
“Our patient population right now is close to 160,000,” said Dr. Shahzad Jahromi, the Physician-in-Chief and Chief of Medical Staff.
“Five or eight years ago, when we were talking about opening this back then, we had around 145,000, so now we have more patients.”
Work on the expansion broke ground in December 2023. The 41,000-square-foot addition includes a new cath lab and interventional imaging suites.
Action News got a chance to take a look inside the room, which featured high-quality, state-of-the-art medical equipment.
“Where we are standing here, you see a lot of technology and big TV’s. This is our cath lab and IR suite,” said Dr. Jahromi. “This is where a lot of our specialized cardiac cath happens, stenting patients and doing everything we need with a patient, internalizing our own IR services.”
Dr. Jahromi says previously, patients would have to go to other partner hospitals that had a cath lab. Now, patients can get seamless and convenient cardiac care at the emergency department.
“With our ED expansion, we’re going to have more patients coming to our ED from our patient site,” said Dr. Jahromi. “But for our cath lab, the volume is going to be very high, probably several hundred per month. “
Hospital leaders say this not only expands the services Kaiser will provide but also improves the quality of care.
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