San Diego, CA
Sharp’s new neuroscience hospital runs nearly full two weeks after opening
In its first two weeks of operation, the new neuroscience center at Sharp Grossmont Hospital has averaged an 80% occupancy rate. That number is not terribly surprising, given that the La Mesa medical facility treated the 10th-most acute strokes in the state and handled the largest volume in San Diego County in 2023, according to state data.
Retired New York firefighter Thomas Daniels, 88, was among the first to occupy one of the 50 beds at what is officially called the Sharp Grossmont Hospital for Neuroscience. Admitted to Grossmont’s emergency department after having a stroke on April 29, he was transferred to the new center one day after it opened on May 1.
Thirteen days later, he was still there, feeling significant pain in his face, but able to chuckle over the enthusiastic welcome that occurred when the center’s first patients arrived.
“They were cheering for me and I said, ‘vote for me’ like I was running for governor,” he said. “That’s my way, just having fun.”
His ability to recall those memories made such a short amount of time after suffering a major neurological emergency is the entire point of building this new hospital within a hospital in the first place.
By dedicating space for neurological maladies, and filling that space with nurses, technicians and physicians all specificallytrained to handle brain-related care, the idea is to make it more likely that patients will receive medical interventions they need as quickly as possible.
Especially with stroke, the phrase “time is brain” has been the mantra in neurological care since the 1990s.
The speed and precision with which clot-busting drugs can be administered and surgery performed is literally the difference between full recovery and living the rest of one’s life with severely impaired movement. Or not surviving at all.
California hospitals are graded on their overall stroke mortality rates, a calculation of how many patients diagnosed with strokes die during treatment that is adjusted to account for overall underlying health conditions and other factors. In 2023, the most recent year for which data are available, Grossmont’s state-issued stroke rating was “as expected,” though results have been mixed, with some “below expected” ratings in previous years.
The goal of all hospitals is to consistently achieve a “better” rating, indicating that their risk-adjusted mortality rates are lower than would be expected when compared to similarly sized peers.
While not explicitly referencing state ratings, Dr. Gregory Apel, an emergency medicine specialist and Grossmont’s chief medical officer, said that breaking off neurological care into its own hospital on the larger medical campus, one with its own entrance and its own specially trained staff, will allow care to reach new heights.
Having dedicated space, he said, allows the recruitment of physicians who specialize more deeply. Already, for example, Grossmont has recruited several endovascular neurosurgeons who are able to conduct both minimally invasive brain surgeries and larger “open” procedures that often require larger openings in the skull for access.
“We have specialists here that are coming from the highest institutions and fellowship programs to really provide that level of care that doesn’t exist outside of a neuroscience center,” Apel said.
The physical structure of the new hospital also enables deeper subspecialization. Several rooms in their own set-aside section of the larger facility are designated as an Epilepsy Monitoring Unit and are equipped with special seizure-monitoring equipment. This new feature justifies bringing in a whole new category of subspecialists.
“There is actually a fellowship program for epileptologists who are neurologists who do nothing but seizure-related care,” Apel said. “We are in the process of recruiting to get specifically that specialty for that unit to be able to deal with the most complex seizures.”
It includes its own 16-bed neurological intensive care unit, as well as another 16-bed “progressive” care unit for those whose conditions are not severe enough to need intensive care. And there are 18 additional beds dedicated to rehabilitation, a major function of any neurology program. Those with strokes and other conditions often must spend many hours with physical therapists relearning once routine movements affected by the temporary loss of blood flow in the brain.
Rehabilitation beds are just a short walk from the neuroscience center’s beating heart, a cavernous physical therapy gymnasium filled with specialized exercise equipment designed for the kind of tasks that, with proper guidance, can help re-activate damaged nerve pathways and rebuild atrophied muscle tissue.
It’s an exponential upgrade over Grossmont’s former gym, which filled a single hospital hallway.
Scott Evans, chief strategy officer and market CEO for Sharp HealthCare, pointed out a special “studio apartment” room just off the main gym floor. This space is configured with all of the equipment a person would need to use when they return home after a serious neurological incident, such as a stroke.
“This is where we can simulate the activities of daily living,” Evans said. “They can start practicing doing their own clothes again, washing the dishes, making meals, getting in and out of the bathtub.”
The center treats far more than strokes. Brain and spine tumors, complex spine surgeries, movement disorders such as Parkinson’s disease, and vision problems related to neurological conditions are also services allocated to the neuroscience hospital, which does not have its own dedicated operating rooms. Surgeries will be performed in Grossmont’s Burr Heart and Vascular Center that opened in 2019.
Many who use the new physical therapy gym will be staying in the hospital’s rehabilitation unit, working daily to regain function before they can be discharged home. But the facility is also open to outpatients, those who are already home, but who require ongoing specialized workouts to help them handle neurological conditions.
By 9 a.m. on a recent morning, a dozen people were already using the gym, including AJ Fiume, 27, a La Mesa resident with cerebral palsy. He spent time using a hand bike, then went through a specialized muscle-building session with a physical therapist.
“That was probably the second or third time I’ve been able to get on the bike like that in my life,” he said. “You know, it’s not like you can do this stuff at 24 Hour Fitness.”
There is more to come. An upstairs doctor’s office will be staffed by a full complement of neurological specialists.
The point, stressed Apel, is to put as many neurological services as possible in one centralized location, decreasing the amount of travel necessary to make appointments.
“You will be able to walk in there and see your neurosurgeon, stroke neurologist, rehabilitation physician … I mean, it’s almost a revolving door of what specialties will be available to patients in one location,” Apel said.
For now, stroke patients and others with emergency neurological problems must be pushed through long hospital corridors to get from the ER to the neuroscience hospital, which is on the opposite side of the sprawling medical campus.
But Evans said that there are plans for a much straighter and subterranean path in the future.
“We’re going to dig a tunnel right under there to connect directly with the emergency department,” the executive said, gesturing south toward Grossmont’s emergency entrance closer to Grossmont Center Drive. “That will make it even faster to get over here.
“We want to make it as fast as possible.”
The Del Mar City Council approved an ordinance May 5 adopting attendance requirements for city commission, board and committee members due to “recent meeting attendance issues.”
The goal of the ordinance is to address “provisions that are somewhat ambiguous and subjective making them difficult to implement consistently.” A Committee Efficiencies Taskforce consisting of Mayor Tracy Martinez and Councilmember Terry Gaasterland were evaluating the issue.
The new rules are scheduled to go into effect on June 4.
“The purpose of establishing committee attendance requirements is to ensure committees function effectively with consistent member attendance and to have a fair and consistent method for handling absences, while recognizing that members may occasionally be absent due to illness or other circumstances beyond their control,” according to a council agenda report.
Previous rules said that if a commission, board or committee member reached three absences within a 12-month period, their term was vacated, according to the report.
“This procedural change will help eliminate redundancy with the Council Policy and give the Council more flexibility to amend attendance requirements in response to the City’s changing needs,” according to the agenda report.
San Diego, CA
This budget season, San Diego asked the public to take a first-ever survey. It faced some limitations.
As Mayor Todd Gloria has prepared his budget proposal for the next year, the city says its leadership has factored in a range of considerations for what to prioritize — including the results of a recent survey that led San Diego residents to give their own input.
The survey, which launched in February and closed Friday, asked San Diegans to weigh in on which city services they care most about and which ones they would feel comfortable reducing, especially as the city faces a $146 million deficit for the coming fiscal year.
It was the first time the city conducted a budget survey. But the survey, built by the city’s Performance & Analytics Department, faced some limitations.
There was no set limit to how many times a person could take it, although residents were asked to respond just once. It was technically possible for people outside the city to respond, though they weren’t supposed to. And the city only offered it in two languages, English and Spanish.
Some community members questioned how the results could accurately represent city residents and their different needs.
“Survey data can sometimes be taken as the word, but it’s not necessarily always reflective of what the full community is saying,” said Erin Hogeboom, director of San Diego for Every Child, when the budget’s first draft was released last month.
The budget the mayor proposed last month included cuts to several services, including $11 million from arts and culture and reductions to funding for parks, libraries and youth services. He is set to release his revised budget next Wednesday.
The city closed the survey on Friday. It will share a final report of the responses with the mayor early next week before the revised budget is released, said city spokesperson Nicole Darling.
By the time it closed, the survey received more than 13,000 responses from across the city, and just over 12,000 respondents included their council district. The largest share of responses, at about 2,600, came from District 3 — which covers the neighborhoods around Balboa Park and downtown. It was followed by Districts 2, 7 and 1.
The fewest responses came in District 8, which includes Barrio Logan, Grant Hill, Shelltown, San Ysidro and Otay Mesa, at 572.
Respondents were asked about which city services they most want to protect. They could also identify city services — from parks and open space to homeless programs to graffiti removal — that they would feel comfortable reducing, on a scale of very unacceptable to very acceptable.
The latest results through Wednesday show respondents are most concerned about poor street and sidewalk conditions, homelessness and housing costs. They want to protect street repairs and resurfacing, police and fire-rescue services from funding cuts, according to the city’s survey data.
Responses show that the biggest share of survey takers — 40% — prefer to see a mix of some service cuts and some new revenue to address the city’s financial crisis. Slightly fewer, 37%, said they preferred eliminating some city programs to preserve others.
Over 70% said they wanted to see new revenue come from hotel or tourism taxes. Just 15% said they want new revenue to come from additional parking fees.
The priorities recorded in the survey, centered around the city’s core services, haven’t changed in the months that the survey has remained open, Darling said.
But Bob Lehman, executive director of San Diego Art Matters, says he feels that the survey guided takers toward certain responses and didn’t provide enough context about the impacts of cuts.
The bulk of the questions listed groups of city services that survey takers could rate on whether or not they thought cutting funding for that service would be acceptable.
“It kind of shapes what your response is, when core services are listed alongside arts and culture,” Lehman said. “Without any context, people are nudged towards protecting the obvious essentials.”
The city says the groups of categories were random and that there was no limit to how many times the survey taker could select one of the ratings on the scale for those questions.
Mark Baldassare, survey director at the Public Policy Institute of California, said it’s a good sign that the city has asked for feedback from the public, especially when big financial decisions must be made. But he stresses that analyzing the survey should go beyond the top-line results.
“You have to be careful that it’s going to be representative and … that you’re looking at different age groups, different income groups and different parts of the city, to make sure that you’re not missing any important details about how city services need to be delivered in times when the budget is in stress,” he said.
The city’s survey included optional demographic questions, including a respondent’s age, income level and race and gender. But Darling says the survey wasn’t meant to be a “statistically representative sample, but rather a snapshot of resident perspectives.”
Most of the survey questions were optional. The only required response was a respondent’s ZIP code, though the survey could be submitted with a ZIP code outside of the city limits. In late April, the city said that fewer than 1% of responses were invalid or from outside the city’s ZIP codes.
On its webpage, the city asked respondents to take the survey only once — but there was no way to prevent them from submitting a response multiple times, which the city acknowledges was a limitation.
The city says the survey is just one of several factors informing the mayor’s budget decisions — with others including legal obligations, economic conditions, departmental needs and the city’s responsibility to maintain services like public safety, infrastructure and homelessness response.
“The survey is one tool to understand how residents are thinking about tradeoffs in a difficult budget year,” spokesperson Joya Patel said. “It does not drive decisions on its own.”
San Diego FC are currently mired in an eight-game winless run in which they’ve collected just three points. But this is still largely the same team that looked dominant both last year and in the early stages of this season. To help us make sense of that, we asked Dmitry Ansimov of SDFC Nation to provide this scouting report:
Notable injuries
Jeppe Tverskov, the heart of SDFC midfield is most likely out until after the World Cup due to a leg injury he suffered on April 25 in a 1–0 loss to the Portland Timbers. Goalkeeper CJ Santos has also been ruled out after a collisionwith.
Team form
The team has been in dismal form. Winless in their last seven and having lost five straight, they finally got a point at home when they tied LAFC’s rotated squad due to their CCC matchup against Toluca. However, SDFC was leading 2–0 and squandered points on a last-minute equalizer at home. Ever since the loss at Toluca, SDFC has not been the same. Toluca exemplified a gameplan that worked well to break down the SDFC high-possession, play-out-of-the-back style and MLS teams followed. Head coach Mikey Varas refuses to change tactics and lives and dies by his 4–3–3 system which makes the team very predictable. SDFC has squandered decisive late goals in back-to-back matches.
Key players
The key players to watch for are Marcus Ingvartsen, who’s found his form this season at the 9. After being out most of last season, Ingvartsen is leading the team in goals scored (7). He’s been clinical in the air and on the ground. The other player to watch for is Anders Dreyer. Dreyer is having a good season again, leading the team in goals+assists (10). Last season’s league MVP candidate is not quite where he was last year, but remains the pillar in SDFC’s attack. Defensively — Manu Duah and Luca Bombino. Duah (CB) just got his first call-up to the Ghana national team and has been fantastic this season. SDFC has seen the difference of when he’s on and when he’s off the field (due to the couple of red cards he’s received this season due to sloppy challenges). Luca Bombino patrols the LB position where he’s been extremely effective. Breaking into the team last year, Bombino has been a regular starter for SDFC since. He’s dealt with an injury that forced him out of two matches – when he came back last match, SDFC looked much better on defense, further clarifying how important he is to the team.]
One thing opposing fans should know
If San Diego wants to get a result, they’ll need to be far more clinical in the final third and far more composed in the closing moments of the match. Possession alone won’t be enough; turning control into goals is the next step. More than anything, this match is about mentality. SDFC has shown they can go toe-to-toe with top teams, but now they need to prove they can finish the job—especially away from home in a tough environment like Seattle. If they can build on the positives from the LAFC performance, stay disciplined defensively, and avoid the late-game lapses that have cost them points, this could be the moment their season finally turns back in the right direction.
Projected lineup
4–3–3: Furree; Bombino, Duah, McVey, Verhoeven; Vazuez, Godoy, Valakari; Morgan, Ingvartsen, Dreyer.
-
Detroit, MI8 minutes agoDetroit Tigers lose fifth straight, Kerry Carpenter injured
-
San Francisco, CA20 minutes agoFallen tree downs powerlines in SF, delays Muni line
-
Dallas, TX26 minutes agoFC Dallas vs Real Salt Lake: Lineup notes 📝
-
Miami, FL32 minutes agoYour 2026 Miami Dolphins Draft Picks Expectations
-
Boston, MA38 minutes agoTexas A&M SS Boston Kellner suffers orbital bone fracture
-
Denver, CO44 minutes agoPedestrian fatally hit by Frontier airplane departing Denver for Los Angeles, flight canceled after
-
Seattle, WA50 minutes agoSeattle beer garden employee found fatally shot inside business
-
San Diego, CA56 minutes agoDel Mar enacts new attendance rules for board, commission, committee members