Workers began lifting new signs into place Monday afternoon and, just like that, Alvarado Hospital Medical Center became UC San Diego Health East Campus Medical Center.
The change in signage signals the start of a new chapter for the two-tower medical complex near San Diego State University, one in which it is suddenly plugged into a university health system that has recently seen its main hospitals in La Jolla and Hillcrest routinely operate over capacity, a symptom of the surge in demand for treatment following the COVID-19 pandemic.
Patricia Maysent, chief executive officer of UCSD Health, said Monday afternoon that the switch took effect at midnight, two months after the university announced on Oct. 9 that it would buy the 302-bed facility from Prime Healthcare for $200 million.
The executive said that a team of 40 to 50 experts have worked continuously since early October to hire the vast majority of Alvarado’s existing employees and increasing the number of physicians working overnight. While the hospital’s emergency department was always staffed round-the-clock, Maysent said that, like most community hospitals, doctors were not routinely present 24/7.
“We’re ramping up critical care, anesthesia, radiology, all of those services,” she said. “It’s a combination of some of our own faculty and some community-based groups that we’re working with.”
The university’s psychiatric department is also already working in the hospital’s west tower. That building already holds a geriatric psychiatric unit, and plans are underway to dedicate the whole building to mental health care.
“This will really be not just the clinical home, but the academic home for our department of psychiatry, because we’re going to consolidate services there,” Maysent said.
Though the name on the sign has changed, the transition is not yet complete. Employees will not technically become UCSD employees until Jan. 1. For the time being, the university will also lease the hospital’s electronic medical records system from Prime. Installing UCSD’s records system takes about six months.
With flu season now under way and its main hospitals already experiencing enough patient traffic to often push patients into emergency department hallways for care, UCSD is hoping that patients, especially those who live eastward along the Interstate 8 corridor, will try the former Alvarado rather than continuing to Hillcrest or La Jolla.
“If they are UC San Diego patients or come to our facilities and they live in this area, they can go to the emergency department here at east campus,” Maysent said. “If they are admitted and they end up needing a higher level of care, we’ll transfer them over to our other campuses, but our hope right now is that we can serve more here.”
She said that is already happening, with UCSD neurologists at other locations providing virtual consults to east campus patients Monday, making a transfer unnecessary.
Some may be confused by Monday’s name change and feel that they cannot go to what once was Alvarado now that UC San Diego is running its operations. But Maysent made it clear that patients who show up in the emergency room do not have to be pre-existing UC San Diego patients. And the hospital’s existing agreements with non-UCSD doctors in the community will still be valid.
“If you have a physician who’s got privileges here, but they’re not UCSD, that’s not an issue, they’ll be able to get care here for sure,” Maysent said.
