New Lusardi Tower Opens to Patients This Week At Scripps Memorial Hospital Encinitas

Scripps Health today announced the upcoming opening of the Lusardi Tower, which is part of a nine-phase major expansion of the Scripps Memorial Hospital Encinitas campus that includes three dozen private patient rooms, a new intensive care unit, a monitoring area for surgery patients and a postpartum unit for new mothers.

Scripps executives, physicians, philanthropist Warner Lusardi and Encinitas Mayor Bruce Ehler marked the facility's completion with a ribbon cutting and Lusardi Tower sign reveal during a celebration outside the building. The first patients will move into the 140,000 square-foot, three-story building on Wednesday, May 20.

"The demand for healthcare services in North County continues to grow, and Scripps is investing in the region to ensure that we will be able to meet that demand in the coming decades," said Scripps President and CEO Chris Van Gorder. "The ongoing expansion of Scripps Encinitas has transformed it from its origins as a community hospital to the destination medical center that it has become."

The Lusardi Tower increases the hospital's overall licensed bed count from 187 to 235, representing a critical expansion needed to keep up with the area's population growth and rising emergency department volumes.

The building was named in honor of Warner Lusardi and his deceased wife, Debbie, both longtime North County philanthropists and Scripps Health supporters, who made a generous $25 million commitment to jumpstart funding for construction of the structure.

"My father taught me the value of giving when I was a young boy, and I've lived my life believing that the opportunities and blessings that come to you should be shared with others," said Warner Lusardi, who founded and operated a family construction company with his father in 1958. "Scripps Encinitas is a critical community asset, and it's gratifying to help ensure that it will continue to benefit countless people here for generations to come."

Other generous donors also contributed to the ongoing fundraising effort to build the tower, including Gerry and Jeannie Ranglas, who underwrote the Jeannie and Gerry Ranglas Birth Pavilion and the Gerry and Jeannie Ranglas Intensive Care Unit.

The building features:

• 36 medical/surgical beds
• A 16-bed, state-of-the-art intensive care unit
• A 16-bed postpartum unit that is connected directly to the birth pavilion
• A 26-bed perioperative unit for convenient care and monitoring of patients before and after surgery

Additionally, the ground floor includes a bright and spacious cafeteria offering a wide range of healthy foods, snacks and drinks to staff members, employees, patients and visitors.

"Growing communities experience a greater complexity of medical conditions, and they need more healthcare resources to address them," said Scott Eisman, MD, physician chief operating officer at Scripps Encinitas. "This expansion of the hospital brings the latest technologies and practices to our patients in an environment that maximizes the abilities of our physicians and nurses to provide the highest quality care available."

The tower complies with all seismic building requirements, and it incorporates a patient-centered design that promotes healing and wellbeing along with efficiency and productivity for the hospital's staff members and employees.