Oakland is experiencing a high-tech hospital-bed boom.

Alta Bates Summit's new medical center, a $350 million, 238-bed acute-care hospital, opens Sunday, just a month after Kaiser Permanente opened its flagship 349-bed hospital a few blocks away.

Called Merritt Pavilion, at 350 Hawthorne Ave., the new 250,000-square-foot center will house patients from the old Summit hospital, plus certain units from Alta Bates and Herrick hospitals in Berkeley, which are all part of the same Sutter Health medical system.

The new rooms come complete with flat-screen televisions, free Wi-Fi and call-button devices that patients can use to specify what they need. They also have views of the Bay Area and pull-out beds for guests, and many of the rooms have lifts installed to help patients get into and out of bed.

While the rooms are spacious, one area that's more compact is the nurses' station.

"There's no intention for a lot of staff to be waiting here for a long time. We tried to build an environment where the nurse is by the bedside with the patient," said Julie Petrini, the hospital's chief operating officer and a registered nurse.

Sutter Health, a network of 24 hospitals based in Sacramento, spent $450 million on the new campus and its parking structure, which was completed in July 2012. Sutter officials said the project was on time and within budget.

On Sunday, about 80 patients will be moved from Alta Bates and from the old Summit buildings into the new facility, Petrini said. A cluster of five buildings sit on the site adjacent to the new hospital.

Some patient areas such as the intensive care unit, operating rooms, imaging suites and catheterization laboratories will remain in the older buildings. Petrini said the number of in-patient rooms will remain the same and no decisions have been made about unused rooms or buildings.

Patients in the acute rehabilitation unit, now in Berkeley's Herrick campus, won't be moved to the new hospital until Dec. 14. That unit is increasing from 39 beds to 58 beds and patients will have access to a 12,000-square-foot rehab treatment space. Those patients will also have a therapy garden where they can practice walking on different terrains and even work on their putting skills.

The new hospital is opening at almost the same time as Kaiser's Oakland medical center, which is one of three new Kaiser hospitals to begin operating this year. Changes in state seismic safety requirements are driving much of the new construction.

The overall number of hospital beds isn't increasing due to changes in how medicine is practiced, said Steven Rousso, principal with HFS Consultants, an Oakland financial consulting firm for hospitals and clinics. All patients will have private rooms at the new Sutter facility, which is also the case for the new Kaiser center and many other new hospitals.

"One of the trends toward private rooms is that hospitals don't need as many beds due to tech advancements on the outpatient side and lower hospital in-patient use rates," he said.
