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Frequently Asked Questions


What is the Medical Center’s Renewal and Replacement project?
Stanford University Medical Center must renew and replace facilities which serve as the foundation of the community’s healthcare system due to state-mandated seismic safety laws, a critical shortage of patient beds, changing patient needs, outdated facilities and the need to further new advances in medical care. The project includes the replacement of Stanford Hospital & Clinics, expansion of Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital and a one-for-one replacement of some of the Stanford University School of Medicine laboratory buildings.

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Why does Stanford Hospital need to be rebuilt? Why can't Stanford Hospital undergo a retrofit?
Strict seismic safety standards required by Senate Bill 1953 mandate that Stanford Hospital must be rebuilt or risk loss of its license. Stanford Hospital was built in 1959 during the Eisenhower era. Retrofitting that structure to meet the strict new standards by the compliance date of 2013 is cost prohibitive and infeasible. In addition, the hospital is undersized and no longer meets the needs of the community. Last year, because Stanford Hospital has not kept pace with the region’s growing healthcare needs, 500 adult patients had to seek care elsewhere and 950 visitors to the Emergency Department left before they could be seen. Stanford needs larger modern facilities to meet capacity, accommodate new medical technologies and address the new standard of family-centered care.

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What is SB 1953?
Senate Bill 1953 (SB 1953) was enacted by the California Legislature in 1994 and mandates all acute care medical facilities, including Stanford Hospital & Clinics and other Bay Area hospitals, to meet strict new seismic requirements by 2013 or risk loss of their license to operate.

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Where will the new Stanford Hospital be located? What will happen with the remaining structure?
The new hospital will be located at 1101 Welch Rd., replacing an old medical office building owned by Stanford Hospital & Clinics and the 700-car parking structure located on Blake Wilbur Drive in front of the existing hospital. The existing facility will remain open until the new hospital is completed in order to provide uninterrupted care to the community.

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What will be the size of the new Stanford Hospital?
In order to accommodate current and future patient needs, including providing individual patient rooms, a preliminary needs assessment calls for a net addition of 824,000 sq ft by removing approximately 700,000 sq feet of old facilities and building 1.3 million sq ft of new facilities to meet modern seismic standards and house 600 beds; a new Emergency Department; new surgical, diagnostic and treatment rooms; nursing and support offices; clinics and administrative offices. The new hospital will be adjacent to the new state-of-the-art Stanford Comprehensive Cancer Center.

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Why does Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital need to expand? How large is the expansion?
Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital has an acute shortage of beds and needs to expand in order to meet capacity needs and further its mission of providing family-centered care for its patients. As more routine cases are being treated through outpatient care, LPCH is taking care of more critically ill children who require longer stays at the hospital. LPCH also must accommodate the new standard of family-centered care, which would provide for individual patient rooms to allow for more privacy and for families to be a part of their child’s healing process. In addition, as medical technology changes rapidly, the equipment used by the Children’s Hospital has become more sophisticated, which requires more space and modern facilities to host that equipment. The preliminary needs assessment calls for building 441,500 sq ft of new facilities on the current site which will add 104 patient beds and feature individual rooms to further accommodate family-centered care; house new surgical, diagnostic and treatment rooms; nursing and support offices; clinics and administrative offices.

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Why do we need single patient rooms?
Single-patient rooms are the new national standard of care because they allow for increased patient safety, privacy and comfort. They also provide for family-centered care, which provides space for families to be with the patient during treatment and recovery. From a practical standpoint, HIPAA federal privacy law also requires private rooms in new hospitals in order to ensure patient privacy.

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What is family-centered care?
Family-centered care is focused on having both the facilities and programs necessary to facilitate the healing process. It ranges from private rooms to specific programs to the interaction between families/patients and caregivers. Family-centered care is an approach to healthcare that is grounded in the pivotal role a family plays in a patient’s recovery. Studies have shown that having a family member or friend accompany a patient facilitates patient understanding, physician understanding, and patient involvement in decision-making.

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What are the plans for the Stanford University School of Medicine?
The Stanford University School of Medicine is proposing to replace 415,000 sq ft of facilities built in 1959 with new facilities on a one-for-one basis with no net increase in space. Changes in how biomedical research is conducted coupled with significant changes in the building safety and seismic codes for research facilities have rendered the original facilities inadequate.

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Will the height limit need to be changed in order to accommodate the hospitals’ plans?
The new Stanford Hospital is proposed to be a seven-story facility at 115 feet. The LPCH expansion is proposed at five stories and 85 feet. Modern hospital planning seeks to minimize the distance traveled from procedure room to patient room. This is best accomplished by arranging differing uses vertically. Heavier procedural equipment is located on the lowest floors with immediate vertical access to the intensive care units serving the most critically ill patients. Upper floors are used for rooms for the general medical and surgical patients after evaluation and treatment on a critical or intensive care unit are completed. Due to building code ventilation and structural requirements, new hospital buildings are constructed with a significantly greater floor-to-floor height than conventional buildings. Floors with heavy procedural requirements are typically designed with 18 to 20 foot floor-to-floor heights. Patient care floors for the intensive care and medical/surgical units are designed to be 15 feet floor-to-floor. These heights exceed the typical floor-to-floor heights for office buildings by 4 to 8 feet.

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What is the permitting process?
Stanford Hospital, Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital and the School of Medicine are currently preparing application materials to submit to the City of Palo Alto for the projects. The project will proceed through the normal entitlement process which includes many opportunities for public input and environmental review. We are also planning for additional community outreach as the project planning and design is developed.

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What is the connection with the Shopping Center expansion project?
Our primary concern and mission is to ensure that the Medical Center is fully compliant with new seismic standards and is able to meet the current and future needs of our community. The City of Palo Alto is exploring a Stanford Shopping Center expansion with Simon Properties, our tenant. It is our position that any expansion of the shopping center should be studied in the same EIR as the Medical Center project. However, these projects are not linked in any way other than for the purposes of that study.

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How many local patients do Stanford Hospital and Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital serve?
SHC served 2,100 Palo Alto residents as inpatients and 4,000 residents who came to the emergency room last year. LPCH served 1,123 children and pregnant women from Palo Alto as inpatients in the last fiscal year and 2,156 individual patients for outpatient visits. Over 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 the Stanford University School of Medicine.

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How will the project benefit the community?
The 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, SHC and LPCH provide emergency services to the community. In 2005 there were more than 42,000 visits to the Emergency Department. Stanford is the only Level 1 Trauma Center on the Peninsula. The medical staff and their equipment are poised to handle major disasters, such as an earthquake or pandemic flu. The Stanford School of Medicine also plays a vital role in advancing the research and discoveries which ultimately improve patient care. Many of the region’s physicians received their training here.

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Will the projects increase traffic on Sand Hill Road?
Transportation impacts will be carefully evaluated in the environmental impact report. While there will be some increase in employee and patient population, a significant proportion of the additional square footage is needed just to have modern facilities for current operations, employees and patients. It is expected that an extensive range of transportation mitigation measures will be developed in response to the EIR analysis.

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When is construction scheduled to begin? How long will it take to complete the project?
Construction will begin after all City of Palo Alto and State of California approvals are obtained. It is difficult to estimate a specific starting date at this time. Part of the application process will consider more specifically how the projects may be phased over time. All projects are estimated for completion by 2025.

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How long will the new facilities meet the healthcare needs of the community? After this project is completed, will Stanford need any additional space?
Stanford Hospital and Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital are currently operating in facilities that do not meet the future healthcare needs of the community. The completion of this project will allow the facilities to meet such needs for the next several decades.

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What can be done to reduce the space needs at the Palo Alto site?
Stanford Hospital & Clinics recently bought the former Excite campus in Redwood City for a proposed outpatient facility with on-site orthopedics, ambulatory, radiology/imaging, and pharmacy services in order to reduce outpatient traffic at the Palo Alto site. This expansion has reduced the need for several hundred square feet of expansion on the current Palo Alto site.

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What will happen to the physicians and dentists who have offices on Welch Road?
Preliminary planning indicates that two office buildings will be affected by the seismic safety and renewal project. The hospitals are working with the healthcare professionals at 1101 and 703 Welch regarding opportunities to relocate to renovated medical office space in the region.

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Will the current hospitals remain open during the rebuilding and expansion?
Yes. In order to ensure that healthcare needs are being met, both Stanford Hospital and Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital will remain fully operational during construction. The original 1959 and 1973 portions of the adult hospital will be demolished after the new hospital opens.

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How much will the project cost?
We are too early in the process to be able to accurately predict costs, but based on typical hospital construction costs the total cost will be in excess of $1 billion dollars. This project will be funded by the hospitals.

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What is the current building size of the Medical Center in Palo Alto?
The Medical Center, including SHC, LPCH and the School of Medicine, is comprised of 2.3 million sq ft.

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Where can I learn more about the project?
Stanford Hospital & Clinics and Lucile Packard Children's Hospital are committed to the public process. In the months ahead, we will be seeking broad community input as we develop the best way to design and build seismically safe, modern facilities while addressing the community's needs and mitigating potential impacts. Public workshops, a project website and a host of forums will be employed throughout the project's permitting process to ensure that community residents, hospital employees and patients are heard and informed of our progress. For more information on the project and to sign-up for project and community meeting updates, please click here.

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