More than 4,000 staff and volunteers have been memorizing maps and running drills for weeks in preparation next week’s relocation of Kaiser Permanente’s largest U.S. hospital to a new, higher-tech home next door on Sunset Boulevard.

The new $600 million Kaiser Permanente Los Angeles Medical Center, which will open March 31, was required by tougher state earthquake standards, but the project also gave hospital officials the opportunity to rethink the facility’s design. The original hospital next door, built in 1953, had become somewhat of a maze over the years after two major additions.

With each of its seven floors the equivalent of two football fields, the new hospital will employ robotic service carts, wireless communication badges for health care workers, finger-print biometric access to drugs, and interactive big-screen maps to track the use of patient and operating rooms. The electronic medical records program that Kaiser has been rolling out systemwide also will be used extensively.

Even with the millions invested in the new facility, hospital officials see cost savings and greater efficiencies down the road that will help them stay competitive as the country moves toward national health care reform.

“We’re even able to stock surgical carts from a central location with just what the surgeon needs so we’re not wasting supplies,” said Mark Costa, the hospital’s executive director.

The hospital maintains the same number of licensed beds, 396, but more will be dedicated to intensive and critical care, in keeping with industry trends of less ill patients being kept in the hospital for shorter stays.

The hospital, which receives Kaiser’s toughest neonatal and pediatric cases in the Southern California region, has unique facilities for babies, children and teens, said Dr. Donald Marcus, the hospital’s medical director. Dedicated surgical suites for tough deliveries are in the labor-delivery department, for example, so expectant mothers won’t have to be transported to a different floor.

Homier touches to make patients more comfortable also were brought into play. The hospital includes a “launching pad” room for parents of infants who may have spent several weeks in the neonatal intensive care unit after birth. The suite gives parents a few days to get used to caring for their baby while still having hospital staff on hand to assist.

And the building’s earthquake resistance? Marcus said a recent quake in San Bernardino County, which shook him up as he worked in the old hospital, wasn’t even felt by workers preparing the new building, which was built to be operational even after an 8.5 magnitude quake.

Insurance Transparency

An L.A. health care industry consultant and an Inland Empire legislator have partnered on a state bill to give smaller employers more information to lower health care premiums.

Assemblyman Paul Cook, R-Yucca Valley, this month introduced Assembly Bill 562, designed to promote transparency by giving employers greater access to information about costs for their health plans. The bill would protect individual employees’ privacy rights, while requiring insurance companies to disclose true plan costs to employers.

The legislation applies pressure to health carriers to disclose claim loss experience. This data is used by health insurers to price employer group plan costs, but often is not shared with the employer paying the premiums. Most larger employers in recent years have been able to demand access to this information, but many insurers still cite cost and patient privacy as among the reasons for not providing it to smaller employers.

“Greater transparency will give employers a more level playing field in negotiating rates with insurance companies,” said Jeff Miles, a national health care analyst and president of the Miles Organization in Marina del Rey. “Lower employer rates will mean lower employee contributions, saving millions of Californians on their health costs.”

Miles researched and helped write the bill with Cook, who is now lobbying some of his Democratic colleagues, especially from the Los Angeles area, to sign on as co-sponsors.

Staff reporter Deborah Crowe can be reached at [email protected] or at (323) 549-5225, ext. 232.