Babies to boom at Roseville Kaiser

Move over, Morse Avenue.Roseville is poised to take over the mantle as Kaiser Permanente's regional baby headquarters next week, ending the Sacramento facility's decades-long reign in the birthing department.Jan. 13 marks the first day of operations for Kaiser's Women and Children's Center at its Eureka Road campus. For Roseville members, that means they'll be able to have a baby in their hometown Kaiser hospital for the first time."Lives are changed in buildings like this," said Rob Azevedo, a Kaiser obstetrician and the new facility's assistant physician-in-chief, at a ribbon-cutting event on Wednesday. "It's not just about the concrete. It's not just about the steel."Officials made use of their new clientele for the event, lining up seven pregnant mothers behind a bootie-adorned ribbon."It doesn't take an obstetrician to see what all these women have in common," Azevedo said. One of them was Jessica Cruz, whose daughter's due date was next Sunday."I keep telling my sisters that my baby's famous and she's not even born yet," she joked.The $150 million facility is the second major expansion project completed in as many months to reach completion at the Roseville Kaiser, following the opening of a larger emergency department in December. Kaiser will have spent a half-billion dollars in new projects in the area when all are completed.The move from Morse is the result of increased membership in south Placer and changing demographics, officials have said.When it opens, the Women and Children's center will be the largest of its kind in the region, official say, boasting 24 private delivery beds and 60 post-partum rooms. That'll be enough for an estimated 5,000 babies a year, according to Kasier estimates.And it's about much more than having babies. The 190,000-square-foot center will centralize in Roseville a 48-bed neonatal intensive care unit, 10-bed pediatric intensive care unit and inpatient pediatrics. All those services are currently located at Morse Avenue, and they're much smaller. For instance, the new building's pediatric intensive care unit sprawls over the top floor; at Morse, it's tucked into a section of the existing adult ICU, said Kathy Blake, nursing manager for the department.The post-partum rooms are a big step up from existing Kaiser services, too, with all-private hotel-style amenities. "It's a huge difference," said Cruz, the mom-to-be. "When you give birth, you're trying to bond with your baby, and it's hard to do that with three other moms in the room."But managing the transfer of existing patients at Morse Avenue to Roseville will be a complex operation.Staff has been preparing about a year for moving NICU patients, said Kim Brown Sims, Women and Children's manager. A medical team will accompany each baby in an ambulance on the journey, with three teams operating at once. About 25 babies are in the NICU on any given day, she said."The transportation has been planned to a T," Brown Sims said. Sacramento-based Sutter Health has also increased its offerings in Roseville. In 2007, Sutter Roseville Medical Center boosted the number of post-partum beds from 12 to 24, and opened a new well-baby nursery with 30 bassinets. A neonatal intensive care unit opened in late 2008.