The $943 million Jacobs Medical Center will open for business on Sunday, UC San Diego Health announced Thursday.
The 245-bed medical and surgical specialty hospital was named in recognition of $100 million in gifts from Joan and Irwin Jacobs.
UCSD Health said the 10-story facility will foster partnerships between physicians and scientists, offer precision medicine and conduct clinical trials.
“Jacobs Medical Center represents a tremendous investment in the future and will transform health care for our region,” said Pradeep Khosla, UCSD chancellor.
“We express our profound gratitude to Joan and Irwin Jacobs, and to all donors, for making this hospital a reality,” Khosla said. “Their generous gifts have created a new world-class hospital for the San Diego region. Jacobs Medical Center will serve patients locally, nationally and globally.”
Irwin Jacobs, the co-founder of Qualcomm, said that when he arrived in San Diego in 1966, UCSD was just starting a medical school and didn’t have a hospital.
“It’s very exciting to see Jacobs Medical Center open,” Jacobs said.
“More and more, we’re learning how to bring results from basic research in biology and engineering to medicine, and to the patient,” he said. “This medical center is going to show how effective that kind of integrated care can be. Innovations will spread out from San Diego, and go all around the world.”
The 509,500-square-foot facility will include three specialty centers — the Rady Pavilion for Women and Infants, the Pauline and Stanley Foster Pavilion for Cancer Care and the A. Vassiliadis Family Pavilion for Advanced Surgery. All are named for area philanthropists.
UCSD said the majority of rooms at the hospital will feature floor-to- ceiling windows with panoramic views of San Diego, and iPads that control lighting, temperature and entertainment. The iPads will also allow patients to see photos and biographies of their clinical care team, when their next medical test is scheduled and access a bedside medical chart.
More than 150 pieces of art — including paintings, sculptures, digital photographs and lithographs — will be displayed throughout the hospital.
The Jacobs Medical Center will connect with other medical centers and research institutes of UC San Diego, including the Thornton Pavilion and the Sulpizio Cardiovascular Center. The facility also has a bridge to the Altman Clinical Translational Research Institute, part of a national consortium of 60 medical research institutions.
It’s also within walking distance of the Moores Cancer Center, Shiley Eye Institute and an outpatient pavilion that’s scheduled to open next year.
Construction on the Jacobs Medical Center began in January 2012.
—City News Service