Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital: Active Fiber DAS for an OSHPD-Compliant Acute-Care Facility

Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital is an acute-care hospital in Santa Rosa, California, part of the St. Joseph Health network. As a working hospital, it depends on dependable cellular service for staff, physicians, and the people in its care, with steadily growing reliance on mobile devices across clinical and administrative areas.

Hospital staff and physicians had become increasingly dependent on cellular service for calls and texts inside the building, and existing coverage was inconsistent. The facility was running an over-the-air Wilson booster system alongside a handful of small cells, a patchwork that left weak spots in parts of the building. Leadership wanted dependable, building-wide coverage that would keep clinical and administrative staff connected reliably throughout the hospital.

Several factors made this far more demanding than a standard commercial deployment:

OSHPD oversight on every step. California's Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development governs hospital construction, and the entire DAS had to be designed, documented, and built to pass OSHPD review and close in compliance. This was RSRF's first OSHPD project, and the regulatory review cycle shaped the work from design through closeout.

A fully operational hospital that could not pause. Work had to be coordinated around live clinical operations, including sensitive departments such as the Cath Lab and Radiology. Cutover and testing were scheduled for early-morning windows to minimize any impact on patient care, with the legacy system kept in place as a fallback so coverage stayed available during the transition.

A concrete administrative core out of signal range. The administration offices sat inside a concrete structure that had historically been out of range for any cellular signal. That persistent dead zone was one of the original reasons the hospital pursued a DAS, and the design had to bring usable signal into space the macro network could never reach.

A legacy system to replace cleanly. The new DAS had to take over from the existing Wilson over-the-air booster system and assorted small cells, and the changeover had to be effectively seamless to the people using the building every day.

RSRF designed and engineered a carrier-grade active fiber distributed antenna system built on Comba Telecom equipment. Following a site survey, RSRF developed the engineering design and OSHPD documentation, then deployed head-end and remote-unit electronics that distribute signal over fiber to remote amplifiers and in-building antennas across the hospital's wings. Galtronics low-PIM dome antennas provided in-building coverage, with carrier signal sourced for AT&T and Verizon.

RSRF's scope covered the DAS engineering, head-end and remote equipment, commissioning, walk testing, and optimization, working in coordination with the electrical contractor responsible for the OSHPD-compliant cabling. RSRF also provided remote support from its Network Operations Center, with the ability to monitor and optimize the system after cutover.

RSRF brought the active fiber DAS online and transitioned the hospital from its legacy booster system to the new engineered platform, with the project closing in compliance under OSHPD. Following commissioning and a period of optimization across both wings, the hospital reported no complaints of spotty coverage or dropped calls as of the most recent status, with final donor antenna work being completed. RSRF continued to support the system remotely through commissioning and optimization.