Community Benefits

How does the Medical Center benefit the community?
Stanford University Medical Center has a long history of providing quality healthcare to the community. Over the years, there has been a strong partnership between these institutions and the City of Palo Alto. Many local residents, as well as those from neighboring communities in both Santa Clara and San Mateo counties, receive a wide-range of specialized care from the world-class physicians, medical staff and faculty at Stanford. In addition, Stanford Hospital & Clinics provides critical emergency services to the community as the only Level-1 trauma center between San Francisco and San Jose.

Stanford Hospital & Clinics served 2,100 Palo Alto residents as inpatients and 4,000 residents who came to the Emergency Department last year. Packard Children’s served 1,123 children and expectant mothers from Palo Alto as inpatients in the last fiscal year and 2,156 patients for outpatient visits. More than 5,000 babies are born at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital each year from San Mateo and Santa Clara counties. Many of our community physicians were trained here at Stanford University School of Medicine.

For more information on the comprehensive community benefits proposal presented by Stanford Hospital & Clinics and Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital to the City of Palo Alto, please click here. To read Stanford University Medical Center’s Community Benefits Summary, please click here.

How will the project benefit local residents?
In order to continue to offer the quality of care that our patients deserve, Stanford University Medical Center must modernize facilities that are the foundation of our community’s healthcare services. The proposed plans include rebuilding Stanford Hospital & Clinics and the Emergency Department to meet seismic-safety requirements and capacity needs, modernizing and expanding Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital to meet capacity needs and replacing outdated wet laboratories to meet new seismic-safety standards and accommodate modern technologies.

The new hospital facilities will offer single-patient rooms, the new national standard, which will increase patient privacy and improve infection control. The state-of-the-art rooms will also help enhance the Hospitals’ mission of delivering family-centered care by providing more space for families to be with their loved ones during treatment and recovery.

What does having a Level-1 trauma center close by mean for the community?
If you are taken to a trauma center after you are injured, you have a 20 to 25 percent greater chance of survival and Stanford Hospital & Clinics is the only Level-1 trauma center between San Francisco and San Jose, which means that if you or a loved one experiences a life-threatening emergency, such as a car accident or personal injury, you can take comfort in knowing that the finest care available is just minutes away. The medical staff and their equipment are poised to handle major disasters, such as earthquakes and pandemic flu. Last year, Stanford Hospital treated more than 44,000 patients in the Emergency Department.

How will Palo Alto and the surrounding communities benefit from having updated School of Medicine laboratories?
The Stanford School of Medicine plays a vital role in advancing research and discoveries that ultimately improve patient care. Modernized wet laboratories will allow physicians and researchers to continue to translate basic discoveries into diagnostic and therapeutic applications at the bedside. Many of the region’s physicians received their training at Stanford and have continued to practice and offer the best in modern medicine and patient care right in our own backyard.

What healthcare programs does the Medical Center provide that benefit local community members?
Serving the entire community means providing services to all neighboring communities and ensuring that care is accessible to those who need it most, regardless of economic status or demographic. Whether it is sponsoring mobile immunization units for schools or community centers, providing vaccinations and check-ups for underserved adults and children or hosting workshops, lectures or classes for a variety of audiences, the Medical Center is dedicated to bettering the health and well-being of Palo Alto and its surrounding communities.

In fiscal year 2007, Stanford Hospital & Clinics provided more than $116.7 million in community benefits contributions, including uncompensated Medi-Cal, Medi-Care and unsponsored charity care and community benefit programs. In addition, Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital provided $135,353,910 of community benefits contributions, including uncompensated costs of medical services to government-insured patients, charity care and community benefit programs. These efforts have had a direct impact on the improvement of healthcare in Palo Alto and its neighboring communities.

How has Stanford Hospital & Clinics contributed toward bettering Palo Alto and neighboring areas?
For more than a decade, SHC has dedicated significant resources to a wide range of community programs aimed at improving the health status of its vulnerable community members as well as the community as a whole. From programs such as Partners in Caring, Strong for Life and Farewell to Falls that help keep our senior community members healthy, strong, and living independently to providing services to the homeless and medically underserved at Arbor Free Clinic, SHC has demonstrated its commitment to community service.

At the core of SHC’s mission are research and education. In 2007 alone, SHC committed nearly $20 million to health research, education, and training of physicians and other health professionals.

With an average of 16,000 branch visits annually and 30,000 website visits monthly, the Stanford Health Library makes a significant contribution to the education and health of SHC’s community. Since 1989, the Health Library has provided health information, classes and other services to all community members free of charge. The Health Library, whose main branch is located in the Stanford Shopping Center and can be accessed at healthlibrary.stanford.edu, has health librarians to help community members obtain scientifically-based medical information so they can make informed health-related decisions. In addition, the Library offers free workshops on nutrition, heart disease, cancer wellness and a variety of other health topics and reaches over 600 Palo Alto residents every quarter with these programs.

How is Packard Children’s reaching out to neighboring communities in need?
Since opening in 1991, Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford has been committed to assuring access to high-quality, consistent health care services for all children, adolescents and expectant mothers, regardless of their ability to pay for services. The hospital’s extensive support of California’s Medi-Cal and Healthy Families programs, and our local counties’ Healthy Kids programs, is a major contribution to the health status of our immediate community. In addition to this substantial commitment, LPCH also sponsors several programs that take the hospital’s services and expertise beyond the doors and walls of the hospital.

For more than a decade, Packard Children’s has been serving homeless and uninsured teens through its “Teen Van” program. The mobile program visits teen shelters and schools in at-risk neighborhoods to provide comprehensive primary health services for acute illness and injuries, physical exams, health education and anticipatory guidance, mental health counseling and referrals, immunizations, nutrition counseling, pregnancy testing, counseling, and family planning services, risk behavior reduction counseling, and referrals to community resources. All services of the physician, nurse practitioner, social worker, and dietician as well as medications are provided at no charge to the patient.

LPCH pediatricians, obstetricians, a nurse practitioner, and a social worker work at Ravenswood Family Health Center in East Palo Alto to build the capacity of this critical community health center to service the health needs of families in East Palo Alto and East Menlo Park. In 2005, the hospital donated a mobile medical van to the clinic so that Ravenswood could take health services to schools and to homeless and uninsured individuals in surrounding areas.

The hospital’s Maggie Adalyn Otto Safely Home Car Seat Fitting Station helps parents in our community learn to correctly install child car seats. This service is provided free of charge to any parent at both the hospital parking lot and in scheduled locations in the community, including East Palo Alto.

In addition, the hospital regularly schedules lectures about child and teen development issues such as how to eat more nutritiously in a fast-food world, bullying, eating disorders and sleep disturbances in children among others. The very popular Heart-to-Heart series for pre-teen boys and their fathers and pre-teen girls and their mothers is a sell-out every time it is offered.

For a complete and up-to-date listing of all of the programs LPCH provides in our community, visit our website at http://www.lpch.org/aboutus/community/index.html.