Kaiser unveils new building in Victorville

VICTORVILLE Kaiser Permanente unveiled its new high-tech, environmentally-friendly medical office building at 13993 Park Ave. on Friday morning, just seven months after shovels hit the ground.

The 8,700-square-foot facility stands just south of Kaisers larger building, near Palmdale Road. It will officially open for patients on Monday, with nine doctors using 16 exam rooms in the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certified facility. Primary care services will include family medicine, pediatrics, internal medicine, allergy and physical therapy.

We were long overdue to have more offices, said Greg Christian, executive director of Kaiser Foundation Hospitals/Health Plan in the San Bernardino County area. He welcomed Kaiser employees, city officials and representatives from the construction and architect teams to a ribbon-cutting ceremony before leading tours of the building.

We serve 64,000 members in the High Desert. It is one of our faster growing markets in the Inland Empire, Christian said. In seven short months we pulled this together. It certainly offers a lot more convenience for members in the High Desert. Its LEED certified because we want to be eco-friendly and provide a healthy environment.

Kaiser serves 3.7 million members in Southern California, with more than 460,000 of those in the Inland Empire, Christian said. The medical provider began offering seven-day urgent care treatment at its first Victorville medical facility, which opened in 1998, in October. Although that facility is 48,300 square feet, Christian said the company had outgrown that space.

Weve had doctors doubled up for almost two years, Rhonda Brockett, a registered nurse, said. So theyre excited to be here.

Brockett said the designers allowed Kaiser employees to choose the color palette for the new facility.

Theres a lot of desert (motifs) in the desert, she said. We wanted a spa-like theme.

Thats exactly what they got, with pastel colors of green, yellow and gray on the walls, along with some almost Asian-themed water and bamboo wallpaper. The lighting is a mix of fluorescent and LED and screens on the western outside of the building prevent the suns brightness from ever penetrating the windows. Thirty-five additional parking spaces have been added as well.

This is not the end of our work here in the High Desert. Youre going to see more, said Dr. David Quam, area medical director and chief of staff for the San Bernardino County area. Were really on the cutting edge of technology. We believe investing in technology is the future of medicine.

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Kaiser unveils new building in Victorville