Mineral King Wing

A Marvel in 1969, but an Antique today

The Mineral King Wing of Kaweah Health Medical Center (KHMC) opened in 1969 to replace the Visalia Municipal Hospital. It is currently at the heart of a lot of the care we provide at KHMC, including where we treat patients who have cancer, patients who are having babies, and patients who need elective/emergency surgery. The Mineral King Wing also houses our cafeteria, pharmacy, and many of our operating rooms.

The building and its current 203 patient rooms were cutting edge (and award winning) when they were built, but they are now 50 years old. To put that in context, the Mineral King Wing was built before we went to the moon, when the cost of a house was $40,000, when Richard Nixon was President, before computers were used in health care, and when the population of Visalia was less than 27,000. In other words, a lot has changed since 1969.

Replacement or Repurpose

We are currently studying options to either replace the Mineral King wing or to repurpose the building. We're looking at more than a dozen design options that will provide us with the number of acute care beds that we would need to care for our community in the future. In the future, it is predicted that even with our work to reduce the amount of time someone is in our hospital and to shift services to an outpatient setting, our community will continue to grow and age. This will require us to add beds to meet the higher demand. We are looking for a design that would allow us flexibility in funding so that we could build in phases and/or take an incremental approach.

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