The Bee did a story today on the groundbreaking ceremony held yesterday for a new Kaiser Hospital in the Railyards. The hospital is designed to have 310 beds and Emergency Room functionality. OK, fine. It's not like there is an overabundance of healthcare facilities in our growing region.  Here's just one indicator: the state's Economic Development Department says Nurse Practitioner is one of the top-five occupations with the fastest job growth (64%) in the region. Clearly, as the region's current population ages and as the region gains more people (as is expected), more healthcare facilities will be needed. Oh, duh.

What the article did NOT discuss, though, is what the future holds for Kaiser in our immediate community. That's important because our area and nearby communities have a whole lot of Kaiser members who depend on the Kaiser Morse campus (the hospital and nearby buildings). Since Kaiser is probably our community's largest employer - and one that offers good-paying jobs - that matters, too. What will become of the existing 287-bed hospital on Morse between Alta Arden and Cottage? Or Kaiser's clinics and other facilities on Fair Oaks, Exposition, Watt, Arden and so on? 

Our newsroom elves tell us that Kaiser has a history of ineptitude when it comes to facilities management.  They say Kaiser often builds buildings and then figures out what will happen in the buildings afterwards - as opposed to building facilities with an architectural program intended to fulfill a strategy.  Consider that the Kaiser Point West clinic was built without room for dermatology, while the derm clinic on Arden Way was closed at the same time. Oops, send the Arden/Point West derm patients to Rancho Cordova.  Oops, not enough space there to meet demand, so re-configure the Fair Oaks clinic and provide derm there, too. And so on. For another example, the maternity services at Kaiser Morse were moved to Roseville. If you needed maternity care, you had to go to Roseville, since the local maternity wards for the large number of Kaiser members in Sacramento County north of the American River had been closed. Lo and behold, the population explosion in the Loomis Basin resulted in high demand for the Roseville maternity facilities. Guess what's to be included in the new Railyards hospital: maternity care. The aging, centrally-located hospital on Morse has plenty of land on which a parking garage could have been built so as to create room to expand the medical services there. Besides, it's emergency services are provided outside the floodplain (unlike the Railyards). Ahh, but let's not forget that the City of Sacramento wants the Railyards to be developed and they covet Kaiser, too. And they had no opposition because the County of Sacramento typically delays action until rugs are pulled out from under it.

What will Kaiser do with its Morse campus and its other nearby facilities? Us lowly denizens of this neck of the unincorporated UnCity will no doubt be among the last to be told. The media is hyper-focused on the City of Sacramento. Arden Arcade doesn't exist unless there is a nasty crime for reporters to write about. And there's the County's track record of not engaging until the cows have left the barn for good. Maybe the Morse campus and its jobs will remain. Maybe it won't. All we can do is cross our fingers and wish for the best, it seems.