By Jonathan Horwitz | jhorwitz@scng.com
On the outside, it’s a shimmering nine-story building. The sun dances off its undulating blue glass.
On the inside, there’s more than a glimmer of hope.
Children’s Hospital Orange County’s new Southwest Tower is designed with the latest medical technology to provide the best, most convenient care for children and their families, hospital leaders say.
“It’s beauty on the inside and beauty on the outside, capturing and honoring the medical journeys of our patients,” said Dr. Nita Doshi, one of more than 200 physicians who participated in building design meetings to ensure the tower accommodates state-of-the-art medical services.
The 330,000-square-foot tower on Main Street just north of the 22 Freeway is designed as a “one-stop shop” for pediatrics, consolidating many of the healthcare system’s outpatient services under one roof.
Whereas, to date, families have had to schedule individual appointments for their child’s care across multiple locations, the proximity of service providers in the Southwest Tower will allow families to have their kids seen by multiple specialists in one place and one sitting, hospital leaders said.
“Mom and kiddo won’t have to see five different specialists over the course of a month,” regional president of Orange County, Kim Milstien said. “They can see five specialists on the same day in the same location.”
Plus, new and larger examination rooms equipped with special cameras will allow multiple specialists to review a child at once, helping kids avoid the distress of repetitive exams.
The outpatient tower, across from CHOC’s hospital building, will house 25 specialty clinics and multiple pharmacies. A research space on the ninth floor triples CHOC’s current research capacity.
“Recognizing the need to try to pull quite a few of our disparate locations together in a much more coordinated way was the genesis of our Southwest Tower,” Milstien said.
Most levels of the tower will open in June, with fourth-floor oncology services coming online at a later date.
Milstien expects the building to serve approximately 168,000 patients in its first year and nearly 200,000 per year by 2030.
In recent years, the hospital also opened an all-in-one fetal care center and its Thompson Autism Center.
The tower comes to life on the heels of CHOC’s merger with Rady Children’s Hospital in January, which created the fifth-largest pediatric health system in the country.
The scale of the new parent company across Southern California can “change the course of clinical care for children,” Milstien said.
Milstein says the Southwest Tower, with its suite of services and research capabilities, embodies that ambition.
But for all its technological prowess, the modern tower is made to feel comforting.
Take the imaging center, for instance.
“The imaging center is the cutest thing,” Milstien said. “It’s a zoo theme, and the animals on the walls have scanners in front of them, so you can see their skeletons.”
It’s all meant to make the children feel less at the doctor’s office and more at home.
“The MRI that is going in there has this unbelievable technology that allows patients to experience being in different scenes, so they don’t feel that they are in this enclosed space that feels scary or dark,” Doshi said.
The center also has a “kiddie MRI,” a mini machine where children can simulate their imaging experience on dolls.
“There was a time in medicine that all of these children had to undergo anesthesia (for MRI),” Doshi said. “Now, we’re able to use technology and innovation to create a safe and supportive environment.”
Every floor has a thematic installation of toys donated by Mattel that makes the space feel less like a medical building and more like a kids’ museum.
“As you go up the building, each floor has a different era of Mattel,” Milstien said. “There’s a Fisher Price wall, there’s a Barbie Wall, and — somewhere — they’ve hidden a tiny little Choco bear.”
The fifth floor is Polly Pocket. The sixth floor is Hot Wheels. The seventh — Uno. The ninth floor, the penthouse, belongs to Barbie, of course.
Whereas many medical offices feel stifling, Milstein wants the ambience of the Southwest Tower to contribute to the healing of its young patients.
