Multi-Year, Multi-Phase Construction Begins At CRMC

FRESNO (KMJ) – A multi-year, multi-phase expansion starts with pediatrics at Community Regional Medical Center.

The Valley’s population is projected to increase nearly 18% over the next decade and 36% by 2036 – nearly twice as fast as California is estimated to grow.

Most of that population growth in the region is expected among seniors 75 to 80 years old and those living past 100, a group more likely to need hospital care and cancer care.

But the largest single age group in the region will continue to be children under five.

Within a decade, the number of children in the Valley under the age of 10 will reach nearly half a million, the largest age group in a region that suffers from a shortage of pediatricians and pediatric specialists.

Community entered into a long term agreement with UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals in 2015 to design more child friendly treatment areas, intensive care rooms and the expansion of a pediatric unit

UCSF pediatric specialists have already joined Community -in pulmonology, gastroenterology, orthopedics, child development, cardiology and endocrinology -seeing patients in the children’s clinic at the Deran Koligian Ambulatory Care Center on the downtown hospital campus.

The agreement integrates UCSF’s academic strengths and expertise in perinatal, pediatric specialty care and pediatric critical care with the clinical expertise of Community in obstetrics, neonatology and

pediatric primary care.

Community’s Board of Trustees also approved funds for planning on future bed towers.

The Clovis Community’s expansion that doubled its bed capacity in 2014 is now full, and CRMC, the second busiest hospital in the state, has 60 beds set up in the hallways of the ER to hold patients waiting for hospital beds.

By 2030 the largest part of Community Regional with 600 beds must be rebuilt to meet California’s new earthquake standards.