During a tour of Stanford Hospital's emergency room last year, sixth grader Natalie Eggers was surprised to discover halls overflowing with patients. Natalie, then secretary of her student council at Covington Elementary School in nearby Los Altos, marshaled her fellow students, many of whom had been born at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital. Together they raised $1,392 for children who need emergency care at Stanford.
When I read their story in Stanford Report, I was deeply moved by their generosity. Their support—and the support of so many of our friends—makes me enormously hopeful for the future of our Medical Center.
Stanford Hospital & Clinics (SHC) and Lucile Packard Children's Hospital (LPCH) play vital roles on our campus as the centers of clinical teaching and research. They also are critical resources to the community, and every year they face increased demands for patient care. Yet these facilities, some of which date back to the Eisenhower era, are desperately outdated.
For example, we are required by California state law to meet new seismic safety standards by 2013, with a limited potential for extension if we show significant progress toward that goal. The seismic standards become even more restrictive by 2030. Several major parts of SHC cannot meet the 2013 guidelines, and none of the original 1950s facilities can be brought up to meet the 2030 requirements.
We must rebuild if we are to maintain the hospital's license to operate. Furthermore, Stanford Hospital is the only Level-1 trauma center between San Francisco and San Jose, providing state-of-the-art care for the most complex traumatic injuries and urgent medical emergencies.
The Emergency Department serves both hospitals and is inadequate for current demands, let alone a major catastrophe, such as an earthquake, a flu pandemic or a bioterrorism event.
The estimated $2 billion investment required to meet seismic safety is an opportunity to rebuild the hospital to meet the new standards of patient care and comfort. The goal is to rebuild the adult hospital to provide 600 patient beds; an emergency room more than double the size of the existing facility; new surgical, diagnostic and treatment rooms; nursing and support offices; and clinics and administrative offices.
Once completed, the new facility will allow us to assure access to the most advanced technology and treatments and offer greater privacy and a sustainable healing environment. Research has shown, for example, that single-patient rooms (the standard for all new hospitals) provide patients and their families a higher level of comfort as well as vital health benefits, including a reduced risk of infection and of medical errors related to transferring patients.
In addition, the expansion of the children's hospital, which has been at its capacity and had to turn away patients essentially every week for the past few years, will add 104 patient beds while making other changes to promote family-centered care and house new surgical, diagnostic and treatment rooms designed to accommodate children.
Despite this massive undertaking, there will be no interruption in patient care at the two hospitals. LPCH will remain up and running, while SHC will continue to provide services in its existing building, which is adjacent to the site of the new one, until construction is completed. Of course, this drastically complicates the design of the new hospitals, since both must be adjacent to the portions of the existing hospitals that they will incorporate.
Our proposal for the Medical Center Renewal Project has been submitted to the City of Palo Alto. While our plans have been very positively received, there remain issues of concern to our neighbors, which we are committed to addressing. However, we cannot afford to delay our rebuilding plans for too long. This project is critical to supporting the future access to first-class health care our local community wants and deserves.
Our community has an extraordinary advantage: through the close proximity of the Stanford Medical School (ranked as one of the top research medical schools in the country), we have available a level of advanced medical care that is traditionally associated only with large, urban academic medical centers. The combination of living in a suburban area with a world-class medical facility is a privilege we should all value; few others in our country are so fortunate.
As Stanford embarks on a new era of medical education that meets the highest threshold of innovation, I look forward to our continuing to provide medical care to match. I am confident that in the near future we will have the facilities needed to provide the most pioneering and effective care for generations to come—people like Natalie Eggers at every stage of life.
