Scripps Memorial Hospital Encinitas began admitting patients to its newly completed Lusardi Tower on Wednesday, reaching another milestone in an expansion and rebuilding project that began in 2011.
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Named in honor of a $25 million gift from Warner and Debbie Lusardi, owners of the nationwide commercial builder Lusardi Construction Company, the three-story, 140,000-square-foot structure includes 36 private patient rooms. A new 16-bed intensive care unit, and a 16-bed postpartum unit, both also built for single occupancy, are also included, as is a 26-bed perioperative unit where patients will be monitored before and after surgery.
The new structure includes additional investments in technology, including surgical robotics, which Dr. Scott Eisman, physician chief operating officer at Scripps Encinitas, said will further enhance the breadth of procedures available.
Increases in bed space and for surgical recovery and preparation, he said, will increase the facility’s overall ability to schedule more procedures than was previously possible. That is especially the case in lung-related care, which has long been an area of concentration for Encinitas within the larger Scripps system
“There are a lot of really advanced pulmonary procedures that have gone on in Encinitas for a long time, but it’s now just even more advanced and even greater capabilities with the new building,” Eisman said.
Gastroenterology services will also increase, he said, including the resumption of endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ECRP), a procedure that uses a camera on a long, thin probe called an endoscope to image patients’ bile and pancreatic ducts. The procedure is commonly used to spot gallstones, inflammation and tumors.
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A second phase of the project is already underway, adding an additional 42,000 square feet with new surgical suites, including a cardiac catheterization laboratory, a suite for interventional pulmonology and another for interventional radiology.
The upgrade, expected to open in 2029, accompanies a three-story medical office building on the Encinitas campus that opened in 2021 and the Leichtag Foundation Critical Care Pavilion, which opened with 38 beds in 2014 atop the hospital’s new emergency department. To date, Scripps reports investing more than $480 million in its Encinitas medical campus.
The Lusardi tower also includes a new cafe on its ground floor and, overall, brings the licensed bed capacity of Scripps Encinitas from 187 to 235.
Though recent building projects have often left the hospital’s medical staff working alongside active construction zones, quality scores have not suffered. Scripps Memorial Hospital Encinitas has maintained straight As in the past three years of safety grades from the Leapfrog Group, a national nonprofit that rates the performance of medical centers nationwide. Scripps Encinitas also landed at No. 3 among midsize hospitals in a recent ranking of the nation’s top 100 hospitals published by Modern Healthcare Magazine.
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