This article was written and published by KSL News. To view the original article, please click here: Revamped Alta View Hospital set to open in Sandy
SANDY — After more than three years of construction, Intermountain Healthcare’s Alta View Hospital is nearly set to accept patients following a $140 million renovation and expansion project.
The results of the massive health care construction project currently underway were unveiled on Wednesday during a ribbon-cutting ceremony in Sandy.
Providing additional quality health care services close to home is a major purpose of the renovation of the hospital campus, explained Lisa Paletta, CEO and administrator at Alta View Hospital.
“We have state-of-the-art equipment and we’re here to meet all the community’s needs,” she said. The renovation will allow members of the community to get care for the majority of health care services they need without leaving their neighborhood — from day-to-day health concerns to urgent and emergency care, she said.
“Our goal right now is to revitalize and renovate the campus,” she said. “(The community) can (continue to) expect the great care that they have always received here at Alta View Hospital.”
The main feature of the upgraded campus will be the new four-story, 146,000-square-foot patient tower that will offer a complete range of medical and health care services, Paletta said. The new hospital also includes state-of-the-art technology, new inpatient physical therapy space, room for future growth, new emergency department, surgery, intensive care unit, inpatient unit, sterile processing department and a rooftop helipad, she told the audience people gathered in the foyer of the new hospital.
The campus expansion and renovation — which includes a major clinic expansion that was completed in 2017 and the hospital tower — had two aims, explained Rob Allen, senior vice president and chief operating officer for Intermountain Healthcare. He said the first was to provide greater community access to care and secondly to better meet the needs of the growing communities in the southeast corner of the Salt Lake Valley.
“It refreshes the facilities in a way that can better take care of patient’s needs in the future,” he said. “This will help us serve that need well and help us grow with the community.”
The renovation and expansion project improves access to a wider range of specialties and new technology on the Alta View campus and is designed to offer patients the services they need in a one-stop shop format, Paletta said. Historically, hospital and clinic services were spread throughout the campus and even the city. Now, patients will be able to transition easily from their primary care physician to specialty care and on to services offered in the hospital, like imaging and surgical services, Allen said.
He added that facilities like the new hospital are designed to be part of engineered systems that help mitigate rising health care costs, thereby providing patients with more affordable care.
“Part of our focus is to help people stay healthier and that allows us to lower the cost of care overall,” he said. “It (also) allows us to be more efficient in the care that we give and over time will help us keep health care costs lower.”
He noted that Utah currently has the lowest per capita health care costs in the nation, but acknowledged that “health care is still expensive.”
“We have got to continue to work to reduce that cost and provide value to the community in a way that they can get the care they need when, where and how they want it,” Allen said.
The Alta View Clinic opened in December 2017, offering a full range of services at the four-story, 170,000-square-foot clinic that included InstaCare and KidsCare, podiatry, diabetes, family medicine, according to a news release. The facility also offers a full array of medical services such as cardiology, dermatology, general surgery, imaging services, internal medicine, ophthalmology and optometry, pediatrics, pharmacy, physical therapy and senior services, among others.
The hospital will begin full operation on Feb. 8, Paletta said.
