Kaweah Delta Medical Center

Overview

Kaweah Delta Health Care District is a 581-bed district with eight campuses in Tulare and Kings counties serving the Central Valley of Visalia. Its campuses consist of Kaweah Delta Medical Center, Kaweah Delta South Campus, Kaweah Delta West Campus, Kaweah Delta Porterville Dialysis, Kaweah Delta Woodlake Health Clinic, Kaweah Delta Exeter Health Clinic, Kaweah Delta Lindsay Health Clinic and Sequoia Regional Cancer Center Radiation Oncology in Hanford. Kaweah Delta operates as a non-profit hospital, with less than 1% of funding coming from taxpayers. It received certification as a Level III Trauma Center in 2010, making it the only trauma center in the Greater Visalia Area.

The hospital is formally affiliated with UC Irvine and will in July 2013, recently graduated physicians will begin residency training as Kaweah Delta establishes GME residency training programs in the areas of Family Practice and Emergency Medicine in 2013, followed by a Psychiatry Residency program in 2014, and a General Surgery and Transitional Year program in 2015.

History

The Kaweah Delta Hospital District was formed in March 1961 by a vote of the community. The Tulare County Board of Supervisors appointed the first governing board. After the establishment of the District's physical boundaries and years of planning, operation of Kaweah Delta District Hospital commenced July 1, 1963, when the Board of Directors leased the former Visalia Municipal Hospital, a 68-bed facility and provided basic health care needs to the local community. This building, constructed in 1936, was in use until a new hospital was ready in 1969. Kaweah Delta Hospital is still in operation at this site.

In 2004, the southwest tower along Mill Creek was constructed. It was the site of the Automobile Club of Southern California after it moved from its first office in Visalia in 1941.

Kaweah Delta’s six-floor Acequia Wing, which opened its doors in 2009, is one of Kaweah Delta Medical Center’s most needed and dramatic expansions. A major emphasis of the new wing was healing the community’s hearts at home. The wing’s dedication to cardiovascular health is everywhere in its new Telemetry Department, Cardiac Surgery and Catheterization Labs, three new surgery suites and in its new Cardiac Intensive Care Unit. Additionally, the wing added 38 post-delivery rooms for mothers and babies and increased the size of the Emergency Department, which handles more than 80,000 visits a year. The expanded ED includes four state-of-the-art trauma bays, four critical-care beds and eight new treatment rooms. The expansion allowed Kaweah Delta to improve trauma care services, something that will continue in the very near future as the hospital builds its helipad. The program will allow Kaweah Delta to accept and transfer patients who are in need of a higher level of care when minutes matter.