Sobrato Pavilion is a fantastic addition to Valley Medical Center

Valley Medical Center’s new Sobrato Pavilion opens to patients next week, nine years after Santa Clara County voters approved Measure A, a bond measure to pay for seismically retrofitting VMC and keeping its prized burn and trauma centers open.

There were significant setbacks along the way, for sure. But the end product is a spectacular addition to the region’s health care assets and to the hospital that is the linchpin of Santa Clara County’s health care system.

The look and feel is everything patients and their loved ones want in a hospital experience. The interior design has a calming effect on visitors, and new technology provides the cutting-edge advantages residents expect from a hospital located in the heart of Silicon Valley.

The spacious, first-floor rehab center with its Hydroworx therapy pool and Aretech ZeroG gait and balance training systems is the showcase department. The equipment to help patients rebuild their lives after strokes, auto accidents and other traumas is state of the art.

But it’s the 168 new, private patient beds with loads of new technology and the expanded 32-bed Intensive Care Unit that prepare VMC to serve patients from all walks of life for decades to come.

The new building also means that VMC will remain in good position to attract and retain high-quality personnel. One of VMC’s underappreciated qualities is it trains one of every four doctors in the county, partnering with such prestigious hospitals as Stanford.

State law enacted after the Northridge earthquake required VMC to seismically retrofit its oldest hospital beds or shut them down. The Board of Supervisors, then-VMC CEO Kim Roberts and County Executive Pete Kutras took a huge leap of faith in 2008, amid one of the nation’s worst financial crises, and asked voters to tax themselves to build the new facility.

The bond passed with an overwhelming 78 percent of the vote, and the project broke ground in 2009.

But delays plagued the project. In 2015, two years after the Sobrato Pavilion was scheduled to open, the county revealed that the project was $100 million over Turner Construction’s initial winning bid of $290 million and that it had fired the contractor. Ultimately the county and Turner came to terms. Current County Executive Jeff Smith said that the project hit the rebudgeted amount of $466 million.

Despite the problems, the end result should serve as a source of pride. Visitors at opening celebrations last week were very pleased.

“What’s unique about this county and this hospital is that it thinks long term,” said Paul Lorenz, VMC’s CEO. “The building of the downtown clinic, this new hospital building, the expansion of the emergency department, the expansion of the burn center is a commitment to building a strong, sustainable system that will be financially viable and will serve people from all walks of life for years to come.”

One out of every four county residents receives care at VMC over a four-year period, and the number of patients seeking care has increased by 45 percent since 2000. When they arrive at the new Sobrato Pavilion, they’ll find a facility that’s the equal of any public hospital in the nation — and also superior to some private ones.