Construction Begins on Docs Health Hospital
Beverly Grove-based orthopedic and spinal surgery provider Docs Health Inc. broke ground on a $123 million surgical hospital in the Mid-Wilshire district.
The five-story, 58,000-square-foot hospital building at 6800 San Vicente Blvd. replaces an 8,500-square-foot hospital building that Docs Health purchased in 2019. The new hospital, which is expected to be completed in 2026, supplements the company’s original spinal and orthopedic surgery center at its Beverly Grove headquarters.
Concord-based Swinerton Inc. is the main construction contractor for the new surgical hospital. Swinerton has worked on some other hospital projects in Los Angeles County, including the High Desert Health System in Lancaster, as well as several local outpatient and medical office buildings.
The new surgical hospital represents a slight twist on the decades-long trend toward ambulatory surgery centers that primarily function on an outpatient basis. These centers have sprung up as a cheaper, more-focused alternative to community and regional hospitals. Patients go in, get some imaging done and then have their surgical procedures; after a brief recovery, the patients either go home or to a rehabilitation facility.
Now, more of these surgery centers are putting back in some of the features of full-service hospitals, including multiple suites for operations, a full array of imaging technologies and longer-term patient recovery rooms. But, there’s a specialty-care focus for all of these features – in Docs Health’s case, spine and orthopedic surgery. That means there won’t be patients seeking care for heart conditions, cancer, childbirth and all the other treatments provided by full-service hospitals.
