Building Toward a Healthier Bakersfield

The Memorial House of Hope is unique – because all of the money raised by the event stays here to improve the services of Bakersfield’s only community-owned and community-operated non-profit hospital: Bakersfield Memorial Hospital.

The House of Hope event is being sponsored by the Bakersfield Memorial Hospital Foundation as a way to assist the hospital in its most ambitious expansion ever – the new five-story West Tower.

The $84 million, 77,000-square-foot tower is being built above the existing one-story labor and delivery unit, which sits on San Dimas Street between 34th and 36th streets.

The project involves building four additional floors and adding a total of 114 additional beds – 24 new ICU beds, 30 post-partum beds and 60 more medical/surgery/telemetry beds. At a cost of $736,000 each, the “smart beds” in the new tower will be able to provide continuous monitoring of seriously ill patients. The expansion will also allow for a brand new Children’s Medical Center.

Completion of the tower–scheduled for January of 2009–will come none too soon, since there is already a shortage of local hospital beds, especially for patients needing critical care.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, between 1990 and 2000, the city grew by 41.3 percent to 247,057, meaning the medical needs of our community have increased dramatically as well. Buying a ticket for the Memorial House of Hope is a way of helping to ensure the best medical care will be available when you and your loved ones need it.