By admin 
Area health systems are building hundreds of millions of dollars of medical facilities in Folsom as the population grows in the city and along the Highway 50 corridor.
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Kaiser Permanente marked the latest progress Tuesday, when the health system broke ground on a 187,000-square-foot outpatient facility along Iron Point Road, expected to open in May 2030.
“We recognized that the community was growing. We also recognized the entire Highway 50 corridor was growing, and that we didn’t have the specialty services along this area that we wanted,” said Dr. Richard Florio, physician in chief for Kaiser’s Roseville service area, which includes Folsom. “People want to live here. It’s a great place to raise a family. It’s a great place to retire.”
The Folsom end of the Sacramento region tends to see higher-than-normal wages and generally a good quality of life, said Greater Sacramento Economic Council President and CEO Barry Broome. The corridor has a presence of companies in the semiconductor industry, which the economic council has worked to attract. Intel announced last month that it will no longer sell its 162-acre campus in Folsom, two miles from the Kaiser site.
“I think it makes it attractive to build,” Broome said. “That’s a fairly significant, consistent, high-end, industrial corridor with Micron, Qualcomm, Samsung and Intel… Fortunately for us, we’re a growing region and a growing economy, so we continue to get better and improved healthcare assets.”
One mile east of Kaiser’s project, Sutter Health is building a $145 million medical complex near the corner of Iron Point Road and Bidwell Street, expected to open next year. The health system is also planning a $4.3 million pediatric care center on Iron Point Circle. Just south of Highway 50, UC Davis Health opened a $182 million facility last year, and Dignity Health is building a $123 million ambulatory care center, expected to open next fall. Kaiser did not disclose the cost for its project.
“I can only speculate on the other health systems,” said Kevin Smith, Kaiser’s interim senior vice president and area manager. “For Kaiser, we’ve been watching this growth in the community. And now’s the right time for us.”
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The city’s population has grown to nearly 96,000 as of this year, up from 52,000 in 2000, according to data from the California Department of Finance. When Choose Folsom President and CEO Joe Gagliardi moved to the city in 1989, there were far fewer services, from healthcare to restaurants and entertainment.
“It’s a full-service city now. There are not really a lot of reasons to leave. And then on top of it, we’re blessed to have two wonderful lakes, Folsom Lake and Lake Natoma, that allow us to be different than other places in the region,” he said. “To have these campuses here, it really makes us a hub for the region.”
Local officials said patients in the Folsom area often have to travel to Roseville or Sacramento for specialized healthcare services. The new Folsom facility will likely draw patients from communities further east on Highway 50.
The Kaiser center will offer surgery, orthopedics, urology, dermatology, oncology and gastrointestinal services. It will have 60 clinical offices and an urgent care. The project also includes an expansion of an existing surgery center — to 10 operating rooms from six — slated for completion in 2028. Kaiser officials said they will be hiring a range of healthcare workers for the new center, but that they did not yet have an estimate of how many.
“The city of Folsom has really experienced tremendous growth,” said Florio, the physician in chief. “As the city has changed, we want to make sure we change with it.”
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