Elk Grove's New Kaiser Building: A Sneak Peek

Kaiser Permanente gave the press an advance look at its new Promenade Medical Offices Tuesday. Filled with natural light and organic design motifs, the 67,000-square-foot facility is spitting distance from the skeleton of the half-finished mall on Promenade Parkway near Grant Line Road. It opens to the public Nov. 11. Elk Grove Patch snapped some photos and got answers to a few questions you might have.

What is this place?

It’s Kaiser Permanente’s second Elk Grove medical office building, the last phase of a $350 million expansion in South Sacramento and Elk Grove. The biggest healthcare provider in the South Sacramento/Elk Grove area, Kaiser is moving more of its outpatient services to Elk Grove as the South Sacramento Medical Center becomes more trauma-focused.

What makes it different from your average, boring medical office?

Aside from bread-and-butter services like obstetrics and pediatrics, there’s a high-tech health education store with yoga mats, cookbooks and flat screens showing short films about healthy living. (Chief Physician Rich Isaacs says its clean, minimalist look was inspired by Apple stores.)

There’s also a 4000-square-foot sports medicine center, complete with fitness gym and running track.  It’ll focus more on prevention than on surgery, which Isaacs says makes it distinct from other sports medicine centers.

Why sports medicine?

Kaiser officials think the increasingly-trendy specialty will prove popular with Elk Grove’s weekend warriors and young families.  “Our biggest group [of sports medicine patients] is high-school athletes,” said Dr. Meredith Bean, the center director and a former soccer player for UCLA. “We also see a lot of college athletes that are going to school somewhere else but come home on vacation and see us, and a lot of elite triathletes and runners.”

I don’t have a sports injury. What can I do at the new sports medicine center?

For about $85, patients can get fitness evaluations in which doctors will test their strength and aerobic capacity and provide personalized exercise prescriptions.  The program begins in early 2012.

I’m not a Kaiser member. What’s in it for me?

Non-Kaiser members will be able to get fitness evaluations and shop at the health education store. They’d have to pay out of pocket for any other medical services—probably cost-prohibitive for most people.

What’s the impact on Elk Grove’s economy?

The building will host about 27 doctors and their support staff.  Many of those employees will transfer from South Sacramento, but Kaiser spokesperson Edwin Garcia said some new jobs will be created. City officials also hope the Kaiser project will help inspire new development in the area around the mall, though Mayor Steve Detrick said he’s unaware of any businesses with plans to open there in the near future.

What else did Kaiser announce Tuesday?

They’re donating $25,000 to the Elk Grove Unified School District for obesity prevention.

Twenty-five thousand dollars? That doesn’t sound like much. How will the school district use it?

Schools will compete to score one of 25 $1000 grants by putting together plans to encourage physical activity among their students.