Alta Bates hospital in Berkeley will be replaced by new Sutter medical campus in Emeryville

In a major shift in East Bay health services, Sutter Health announced Wednesday it’s building a comprehensive new medical campus in Emeryville with outpatient care and a 200-bed hospital.

The $1 billion-plus medical center, which will be located in existing and new buildings at Horton and 53rd streets, is designed to replace Sutter’s current 339-bed Alta Bates hospital on Ashby Avenue, according to a Sutter press release on the new facility.

Outpatient care at the new campus, which will include a full array of primary or family medicine as well as specialties, is slated to start in 2028, with the new hospital opening in 2032-33. 

Alta Bates will continue as an acute care hospital until the new facility opens its doors to patients. At that point, Alta Bates will be “reimagined” or scaled down to outpatient surgery, an urgent care clinic, and possibly skilled nursing, the press release said. This means Alta Bates will keep its emergency services open until the new ER is up and running in Emeryville.

Herrick Hospital on Dwight Way, a Sutter facility, will continue to offer psychiatric services, which will expand, the release said. 

And renovations are underway at a Sutter-run medical office on Adeline Street, across from the Ashby BART station, for dedicated OB/GYN services, slated to open this spring.

For many health care advocates, including elected officials, who have fought for years to keep Alta Bates open as vital to the area’s healthcare needs, the Emeryville campus is welcome. Sutter announced in 2016 it planned to shutter the Ashby Avenue hospital by 2030 because it’s out of compliance with state rules around earthquake safety. 

“I am excited that Sutter Health is continuing its commitment to healthcare access for the East Bay region with this new medical center. With this significant investment, Sutter is bringing much-needed primary, specialty, and advanced care closer to home,” said state Sen. Jesse Arreguín, Berkeley’s former mayor. 

Arreguín is among a group that was working to ensure that residents of Berkeley, Albany and the surrounding area have access to a full-service hospital, triggered by the twin storm of the Alta Bates closure announcement, and the closing of Doctors Medical Center in San Pablo in 2015.  

This would have left member-based Kaiser in Richmond as the only hospital serving the area between Oakland and the Carquinez Strait, though there are outpatient health clinics including Sutter’s Richmond Care Center in the Hilltop neighborhood, the William Jenkins LifeLong center in the Iron Triangle and the county-run West County Health Center in San Pablo.

“Our community has long advocated for expanded healthcare services, and this new facility in Emeryville is a testament to that collective effort. I look forward to continuing our partnership with Sutter Health along with key community and labor stakeholders to ensure that East Bay residents receive the high-quality emergency and primary care they need and deserve,” Arreguín said.

New hospital could decrease ambulance drive times for west county

Supervisor John Gioia, who represents Richmond on the Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors and is among those working on local health access issues, posted Sutter’s hospital news of Emeryville’s new medical center on social media. For people in the Richmond area, he said:

“It is better than Sutter’s original plan to close Alta Bates and replace those lost beds by expanding their hospital in downtown Oakland. Instead, building a new hospital off I-80 means less ambulance drive time than to existing Alta Bates or to Downtown Oakland,” Gioia wrote in a comment.

“In that sense, that is a benefit to West County residents, even though this doesn’t replace the need for a West County hospital,” Gioia wrote. “Getting a health system to spend $1 billion for a new hospital is a challenge. In this case, Sutter calculated that building a new hospital was cheaper than retrofitting Alta Bates to meet 2030 seismic standards.”

Gioia also said Thursday to Richmondside, according to Contra Costa Health Services, the new Emeryville hospital could decrease ambulance drive time from west county to the new Emeryville hospital, which would free up ambulences for faster emergency responses in general. 

This doesn’t replace the need for a hospital with emergency services in west county, Gioia said. But west county residents will benefit from the new hospital’s emergency care. 

“President Trump’s public intentions to decrease Medicaid (Medi-Cal) funding for California would seriously impair any ability to get a major healthcare system to build a new hospital for West County,” Gioia wrote. “Doctors Hospital’s failure was mostly due to the low Medi-Cal reimbursement rates and reducing them further would make it nearly impossible to attract a new hospital.

Some Richmond homeowners have been critical of the fact that they’re still paying a 2004 west county permanent parcel tax (Measure D), that was supposed to keep Doctors open. Gioia said the money is still being used for west county healthcare, including youth clinics, urgent care, and youth sports facility access.

Sutter Health announced that Alta Bates would be converted into a 24-hour urgent care facility and an ambulatory surgery center.

Sutter has decided to invest in building a new hospital that meets the state’s 2030 hospital seismic standards rather than spending more to upgrade Alta Bates to meet those new 2030 standards.

“Our community has long advocated for expanded healthcare services, and this new facility in Emeryville is a testament to that collective effort. I look forward to continuing our partnership with Sutter Health along with key community and labor stakeholders to ensure that East Bay residents receive the high-quality emergency and primary care they need and deserve,” Arreguín said.

In addition to family medicine, Sutter’s Emeryville campus will include outpatient care in neurology, pulmonary, dermatology, ophthalmology, pediatrics, rheumatology, pediatrics, digestive diseases, OB/GYN, ear, nose and throat (ENT), urology, audiology, surgery and non-invasive chemotherapy.

The 200-bed hospital, with room for expansion, will include an intensive care unit (ICU), emergency services, surgery, labor and delivery, neonatal intensive care, and imaging such as Xray’s, MRI’s and cat scans. 

“Our Emeryville campus project represents one of the most significant investments we’re making across our system over the next decade and is part of our broader vision to meet the community’s growing demand for expanded access to our services across the East Bay footprint,” said Warner Thomas, president and CEO of Sutter Health.  

The aim is for a medical hub where patients can access numerous services in one location.

“This plan ensures our East Bay patients have seamless access to the full spectrum of Sutter’s integrated services,” said Arzou Ahsan, M.D., president and CEO of Sutter East Bay Medical Group.  

Sutter, a nonprofit with 24 hospitals and 200 clinics in Northern California, also operates the Summit Medical Center in Oakland and Eden Center in Castro Valley. Both are in expansion mode.