Ground has been broken on the $3.7bn California Tower hospital project at UC Davis’ Sacramento campus in the US.

The project is set to address the existing and future healthcare needs of people in Sacramento and the broader Northern California region.  

The new 910,000ft² tower will augment the eastern side of the UC Davis Medical Center.

McCarthy Building Companies is the contractor for the project, with SmithGroup in charge of its design. 

The California Tower project, approved by the UC Board of Regents in January 2022, includes a 14-storey hospital facility accompanied by a five-storey pavilion.

It will introduce 334 private patient rooms to foster patient recovery and minimise infection rates.

More than 250 of the 334 rooms are being designed for adaptability to accommodate a surge in patients from events such as pandemics or natural disasters, with the capability to transform into intensive-care-unit rooms with air isolation.

The tower will be integrated with the existing Surgery and Emergency Services Pavilion and will be equipped with two helicopter landing decks, complex procedure rooms, and other imaging and support services.

It will also house new operating rooms and facilities for pharmacy and burn care units.

This development aims to ensure comprehensive healthcare delivery for the next five decades.

In addition, the expansion is a response to state seismic regulations requiring hospital facilities to be capable of withstanding major earthquakes.

The initiative is part of a broader movement across California where hospitals are upgrading or constructing new buildings to meet these safety standards.

Upon completion, expected by 2030, the current 646-bed hospital – claimed to be the largest in Sacramento – will increase its capacity to between 675 and 700 inpatient beds.

The California Tower project is further anticipated to generate hundreds of construction jobs and thousands of healthcare positions.

UC Davis Health CEO David Lubarsky said: “With the California Tower, we are building a new paradigm of patient care, centred around how a health system can deliver tomorrow’s healthcare today.

“We are building into this new tower some of the lessons we learned from the recent pandemic. As an example, three out of four of the rooms in this new tower can be easily converted to fully functional ICUs if needed, tripling our ICU capacity.”