The Argonaut: Marina del Rey's Community Hospital is Planning for Growth
The Argonaut, a community newspaper and online news site covering the Westside of Los Angeles recently interviewed Joanne Laguna-Kennedy, MSN, RN, vice president of Hospital Operations and chief nursing officer at Cedars-Sinai Marina Del Rey Hospital, about the community hospital's 50th anniversary.
The anniversary was a milestone in more ways than one, according to The Argonaut article, which detailed the current expansion project that will increase the hospital's scope and volume of medical services.
Construction breaks ground next year and will result in a new nine-story, 200,000-square-foot main hospital building, increasing private patient rooms from 68 to 96, with the capacity for 160. The expansion also will increase the hospital's operating rooms from six to 10.
“Access to high-quality health care is so important,” Laguna-Kennedy told The Argonaut. “We need to bring the high-tech capabilities of an academic medical center into the community setting so we can diagnose and treat acute medical emergencies, like acute cardiac events and strokes, where a rapid response is critical to saving lives.”
Under Cedars-Sinai's leadership, the hospital has seen a dramatic increase in patients. As The Argonaut reports, in 2008, Marina Del Rey Hospital logged 22,479 visits to its Emergency Department. In 2018, Cedars-Sinai Marina del Rey Hospital saw 34,220 emergency department visits—an increase of nearly 55%.
And, over the past four years, Cedars-Sinai opened two new urgent care offices in the area–one in Culver City in 2015 and another in the Marina Del Rey-adjacent Runway at Playa Vista development two years ago.
“I’m most excited about the wide range of health care opportunities we’ll be offering to local community members right in their backyard,” said Laguna-Kennedy. “They won’t have to leave their neighborhood to get care at a hospital that has state-of-the-art operating rooms, cardiac, interventional and gastroenterology labs.”
Click here to read the complete story in The Argonaut.
Read more on the Cedars-Sinai blog: Building a Stronger Safety Net with Community Clinics