Kaiser Permanente opens newest Sonoma County medical office building in southwest Santa Rosa

Just after lunch Tuesday, medical staff on the third floor of Kaiser Permanente’s newest Sonoma County medical? office building huddled to discuss the afternoon patient schedule - and the need for a dirty white coat bin and temporary use of a whiteboard.

They were getting used to the brand-new three-story, 87,300-square-foot facility, which opened a little more than a week ago on Mercury Way, off Corporate Center Parkway in southwest Santa Rosa. The state-of-the-art facility is Kaiser’s first zero-net energy medical office building, meaning it’ll generate as much energy as it uses each year.

“Everything is really coming together,” said Dr. Catherine Gutfreund, the physician in charge at the new facility.

Five years in the making, the nearly ?$50 million building is equipped with ?60 offices for medical providers and ?102 medical exam rooms.

Kaiser officials said the new building was necessary, as they’ve outgrown the main campus on Bicentennial Way. Rooms there were crowded and often had multiple uses.

“It gives us more of an opportunity to use the rooms properly,” said Brian Diklich, the new facility’s project manager.

The new facility also will shorten the commute for many patients who live in southwest Santa Rosa and allow the health care provider to expand its outreach to Latinos in that community.

A whopping one-third of all Kaiser patients who live in Santa Rosa live within the 95407 ZIP code, which includes all of southwest and a portion of southeast Santa Rosa.

“We wanted to be able to offer care in their neighborhood,” Gutfreund said.

Gutfreund said about a third of Kaiser’s primary care physicians who worked out of the main campus moved to the Mercury Way facility. They brought most of their patients with them, she said.

Although it’s mainly a family medicine facility with pediatrics and obstetrics and gynecology services, the campus also offers specialty services, including dermatology, foot and ankle surgery and physical therapy. It also includes an imaging department, specimen laboratory and a health education and wellness department.

In the building’s lobby, a large touch-screen monitor resembling a giant iPad offers patients and visitors an interactive way of finding doctors’ offices and various departments. Once activated, an animated arrow gives directions.

The walls in the main corridor on each floor gradually change color, an attempt to create a calming and serene environment for patients and staff. Laptop and electronic charging stations are located throughout the building, not unlike the lounge areas at many airports, Gutfreund said.

The parking lot has ?44 spaces designated for vanpool, electric and clean air vehicles, as well as 14 electric vehicle charging stations.

You can reach Staff Writer Martin Espinoza at 707-521-5213.