It's still under construction, but Escondido's new Palomar Medical Center West will get some important visitors tomorrow. Executives from other health-care systems around the country will get a look at what's being called the hospital of the future.
The new 11-story Palomar Medical Center West will have a number of features designed to improve healing.
It will have terraced gardens on each floor. There will be Individual nursing stations spread throughout patient floors. And the patient rooms will be twice the size of those in traditional hospitals.
Palomar Pomerado Health CEO Michael Covert said this facility is really different.
"The way we built hospitals over the years has really been in support of the caregivers, even more than the patients and families themselves. And our whole approach has been the opposite of that."
The hospital sits just off Highway 78 near the Escondido-San Marcos border. It will open for business in July 2012.
The price tag for the facility is just shy of $1 billion. It's the nation's largest hospital construction project.
