Impressive would be one way to describe it. A long time coming would be another. As many of you know, I joined the Stanford faculty back in 1991, before there was even an Emergency Medicine residency training program (having finished my Chief year at UCLA, helping develop the new program was part of why I came back to the Farm). We accepted our first 8 residents in 1991, had roughly 8 full time faculty, and saw perhaps 20,000 patients per year in a space about half the size of the current Emergency Department (which saw ~75,000 patients last year). Emergency Medicine is now its own Department, has 85 faculty (full and part time), 60 residents, and 15 fellows. And now… we’re getting a NEW HOSPITAL, which is impressive and a long time coming!
The seven-story, 824,000-square-foot facility will accommodate advances in medical technology, increase capacity and meet new earthquake safety standards.
It will feature:
- An enlarged emergency department with twice the floor space of the current one.
- 368 individual patient rooms that provide increased privacy and comfort for patients and their families.
- 20 operating rooms, eight interventional/radiology rooms, three MRI scanners, three CT scanners and one interventional MRI scanner.
- Five gardens for patients and visitors, walking trails and a meditation room.
- A parking structure with 900 spaces.
The new building — which will be connected to the existing hospital by a second-floor pedestrian bridge, an underground tunnel and a street-level pedestrian path — is part of the Stanford University Medical Center Renewal Project. The project includes the recent expansion of Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford, a renovation of the Hoover Pavilion and new labs at the School of Medicine.
Besides all the physical enhancements, hospital teams are working on digital tools that will improve the patient experience. Patients will be able to use a new version of the MyHealth app to speed up the admitting process, get reminders about appointments and view step-by-step walking directions from the parking garage to various locations within the building.
Impressive. Read more here.
Dr. Eric Weiss
