Community Matters

The dream of a new hospital is realized

But transplant patient Paul Lee and many others said that the most moving aspect of the sparkling facility was the warmth and caring of the people within it.The first patients to move into our soaring new Stanford Hospital on its opening day last fall admired its features, from the spacious private rooms to the picture windows offering expansive views.

That day, we are proud to say, the concrete and steel of our much-anticipated, state-of-the-art hospital came to life with the heart and soul of Stanford Medicine: our physicians, nurses and staff who provide tireless care, and the patients and families we serve on the San Francisco Peninsula and beyond.

With the new seven-story facility, we have created a world-class medical environment that not only matches the high caliber of our research, education and patient care, but also offers abundant opportunities to raise the standard still higher.

Mirroring advancements in the recently renovated Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford, our hospital enables powerful translational medicine, improving our ability to bring breakthroughs to our patients. In our new operating rooms — on more than 3 acres of surgical care space — surgeons can now access moving images of their patients during surgery and connect with specialists anywhere in the world in real time.

The new hospital also allows us to care for more patients. Its 368 patient beds bring our total to 600 for adult care, and with the opening of the facility, the Marc and Laura Andreessen Emergency Department now has two locations, enabling us to treat 30,000 more patients each year. The emergency department at 1199 Welch Road serves trauma patients and patients who are 21 or older, and we provide emergency care for patients age 20 and younger at 900 Quarry Road Extension.

The patient experience is particularly important to us. To ease the logistical burdens of a hospital stay and ensure patients’ needs are met, we thoughtfully combined the virtual and physical worlds. Within the hospital, the Guided Journey app empowers and informs patients at the bedside. Once they return home, the MyHealth mobile app allows patients to review test results remotely and have virtual follow-up visits with their doctors.

We also feel strongly about supporting patients’ loved ones. The hospital’s third floor is a testament to our dedication to wellness, featuring lounges, a meditation and chapel space, and a staffed resource center to provide information and assistance. Infused with natural light, the facility also includes more than 400 works of original art and 4 acres of gardens.

As exciting as these innovations are, however, the new Stanford Hospital is just one aspect of our long-term plan for helping this community thrive through our vision of precision health — a future in which personalized medicine empowers doctors to predict, prevent and cure disease — precisely.

The completion of the latest expansion projects at Packard Children’s advances this vision by increasing the hospital’s capacity for treating the most critically ill young patients and those with rare conditions. The Bass Center for Childhood Cancer and Blood Diseases moved to a 65,000-square-foot space on the main building’s fifth floor, adding shared spaces and 49 private rooms for patients with blood disorders and those undergoing stem cell treatment.

On the first floor, the Betty Irene Moore Children’s Heart Center opened an outpatient clinic — complete with a dedicated telehealth room and special consult rooms for family conversations. This clinic also houses the hospital’s neurodiagnostics and pulmonary diagnostics services. The Pulmonary Function Laboratory provides testing to help diagnose lung and breathing conditions, as well as guide treatment decisions. The Electroencephalography Laboratory uses brain imaging to identify and treat neurological conditions in children.

We eagerly anticipate another milestone this spring, with the opening of the Biomedical Innovations Building. The research labs and light-filled rooms of this 215,500-square-foot facility will offer a collaborative setting for scientists and clinicians in related fields to work together on translational research and clinical treatments.

And as the new hospital springs to life, the original Stanford Hospital building will continue its long tradition of providing value-focused patient care. We are activating a plan for this facility that reimagines it with a focus primarily on cancer care. We’ll modernize the operating rooms, and we’ll build two extensions, adding 57 new patient rooms — all private. We also will renovate to more seamlessly integrate this historic building with the new Stanford Hospital.

As we reflect on its opening and other activity of these past months, we feel great pride and great hope. During more than a decade of hard work and planning, the Stanford Hospital shimmered on the horizon like a distant dream. Now that this dream has become a reality, we’re excited to continue our progress, building a future of biomedical discovery and clinical care that will benefit the community and reach far beyond our campus.