Anne DiNardo

Owner: Los Angeles County

Completion Date: July 2015

Total building area: 280,000 square feet

Total construction cost: $285 million

Cost/sq. ft.: $628

Architecture: HMC Architects (design and scoping architect), RBB Architects (architect of record)

Interior design: HMC Architects

Engineering: Saiful Bouquet

Construction: Hensel Phelps

Wallcoverings: Bacon Veneers, Acrovyn

Paint: Dunn Edwards, Frazee

Laminate: Wilsonart, Nevamar

Masonry wall: Tristone & Tile Inc.

Southeast General Hospital opened in South Los Angeles in the aftermath of the 1965 Watts Riots. For decades, the facility, which was renamed Martin Luther King Jr. – Harbor Hospital, was one of the few hospitals serving the community’s poorest residents. It had a big presence, too, housing more than 450 beds, an active trauma center, and a nearly 40-acre campus.

Not every patient approved for discharge is able to vacate the hospital bed immediately. Some might be waiting on a prescription to be sent from the hospital pharmacy while others might have to wait for a family member to pick them up.

Keeping these patients in beds for non-care-related reasons can contribute to backlogs in the admitting process and increase the time sick patients sit in the emergency department (ED) until moving upstairs.

Two years ago, HCA Healthcare Systems (Nashville, Tenn.) set out to expand its presence in northern Virginia with a new 124-bed, 234,000-square-foot hospital and medical office building. The facility would be located on a 51-acre greenfield campus in Dulles, Va., and mark the area’s first new hospital in 100 years.