By Lawrence Dickinson, M.D.

Eden Medical Center has a world-class team of doctors, nurses and therapists at its Sutter East Bay Neuroscience Center. The Neuroscience Center is the best provider of cranial and spinal surgery care in the East Bay, and one of only two hospitals in the entire Bay Area to receive top marks in outcomes from surgical procedures of the brain. As a neurosurgeon at both Castro Valley and San Leandro campuses since 1998, I can tell you that our team is very excited about the new hospital plan and what is in store for our award-winning Neuroscience Center.

Eden was built in 1954, and as you can imagine, we have had several additions and remodels since then. What we have today is a labyrinth of hallways that my patients and I must navigate to get to technologies such as MRI and nuclear imaging, now located in wings of the hospital far removed from the patients’ rooms. Sometimes in our quest for a diagnosis or treatment in the existing hospital, my patients and I feel like rats in a maze, searching for the cheese!

The new hospital design is awesome! When Sutter Medical Center Castro Valley opens its doors, all the neurology services will be easily accessed from the patient floors, requiring minimal patient transportation. Upgrades in our imaging center will allow us to more rapidly diagnose stroke and epilepsy, and improvements in critical care services like bedside Electroencephalogram (EEG) and brain oximetry monitoring (both portable devices used to measure the state of the brain) will keep the Neuroscience Center on the forefront of technology in neurosurgical patient care.

The new medical information technology system will allow me to access test results with my patient right in their room! These changes will not only improve the quality of the patient’s hospital experience, but also dramatically improve my efficiency in caring for my patients.

The new medical office building will be connected to the hospital by way of pedestrian overpasses and all technologies will also be integrated into the hospital IT systems. This will greatly improve the patient experience in the outpatient setting, from doctor office visit to lab studies and other diagnostic tests, all on one campus — not to mention improved free parking.

If you have any questions or comments please post it in the comments box below my post. I’d like to hear from you.