A hospital
Stanford’s new $2 billion
for the future
hospital launches with a two-day open house BY SUE DREMANN PHOTOS BY VERONICA WEBER
I
At top: The new Stanford Hospital’s main atrium rises several floors under a glass dome and is surrounded by four towers in which patients recuperate in private rooms. Above: In the operating rooms at the new Stanford Hospital, computer monitors and surgical lighting fixtures are attached to the ceiling on arms for easy movement. Page 32 • September 13, 2019 • Palo Alto Weekly • www.PaloAltoOnline.com
n the cramped yet bustling waiting room of Stanford Hospital’s emergency department, dozens of people sit in blue vinyl chairs waiting to see a doctor. Some are engrossed in their smartphones; others don masks to protect the roomful of visitors from their respiratory illnesses. A few arrive in wheelchairs, too injured, nauseous or dizzy to stand. When this 1,142-square-foot room overflows, people wait on benches in the hall. There’s little privacy when the patient finally gets to see a physician in one of the emergency department’s 54 treatment bays. A thin curtain separating each bed doesn’t mask conversations or the sound of someone’s rattling cough or the moans of an accident victim. Nurses squeeze past each other in the examination bays. Medical staff navigate through labyrinthine spaces in which EKG machines and saline-drip stands co-mingle. The emergency room, or ER, is a hectic place. Every square inch of the 18,069-square-foot space has been claimed by patients, equipment or staff. “In the current ER, we’re like a tight-knit family,” Samuel Snell, emergency department assistant patient care manager, quipped during a recent August morning. For Snell and other hospital personnel, the Stanford emergency room capacity has been outpaced by the region’s rapidly growing population. It outgrew its space long ago. But in less than two months, the new Stanford Hospital will be opening and with it a 42,692-square-foot ER and regional trauma center with a shiny, cavernous hallway and 66 private treatment rooms. (See side bar on page 34.)