New Kaiser Hospital to Begin Taking Patients

The 163-bed Kaiser Permanente Baldwin Park Medical Center will begin taking patients next month.

The hospital, located just south of the San Bernardino Freeway on Baldwin Park Boulevard, will feature a wireless telephone system that contacts the medical staff in an emergency, as well as patient monitors that nurses wear on their belts.

The 740,000-square-foot facility was completed in 1994, but initially offered only outpatient services.

Kaiser officials said growing demand for hospital bed space in the San Gabriel Valley has prompted opening the facility to overnight and longer-term patients.

The hospital is the first to open under a new national labor-management partnership between the country’s largest health maintenance organization and the AFL-CIO.

At the medical center, union employees have worked with managers to select equipment, hire staff and develop a new model of leadership in which, instead of a supervisor, each unit will have a union partner and management partner, officials said.