Renewal Project

What is the Medical Center’s Renewal Project?
State seismic-safety laws, capacity shortage and the need to accommodate modern medical technology require Stanford University Medical Center to upgrade and replace its facilities. 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 School of Medicine’s wet laboratory buildings.

Why does Stanford Hospital need to be rebuilt?
Like other acute care hospitals in California, Stanford Hospital must meet strict new seismic safety standards established by Senate Bill 1953 or risk loss of its license. 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, more modern facilities to meet capacity, accommodate new medical technologies and adopt the new hospital standard of single-patient rooms.

Why can’t Stanford Hospital undergo a retrofit?
Stanford Hospital was built in 1959 during the Eisenhower era. Retrofitting that structure to meet the strict new standards by the new compliance date of 2013 with limited potential for an extension is cost prohibitive and infeasible. In addition, seismic safety standards become even more restrictive in 2030. Several major parts of Stanford Hospital & Clinics facilities cannot meet the 2013 guidelines and none of the original 1959 facilities can be brought up to meet the 2030 requirements.

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

Where will the new Stanford Hospital be located? What will happen with the remaining structure?
The new Hospital will be located within the existing footprint of the Medical Center along Pasteur Drive and Welch Road. The existing facility will remain open until the new Hospital is completed in order to provide uninterrupted care to the community.

How big will the new Stanford Hospital be?
In order to accommodate current and future patient needs and meet new national standards in patient care – in part by providing single-patient rooms – the Hospital’s size will increase by a net of 824,000 square feet. This addition will be accomplished by removing roughly 700,000 square feet of old facilities and building 1.3 million square feet of new facilities near the current Hospital on the Medical Center site. The new buildings will meet strict modern seismic safety standards and house 600 patient beds, an expanded Emergency Department, new clinics and administrative offices, nursing and support offices as well as new surgical, diagnostic and treatment rooms. The new Hospital will be next to the new state-of-the-art Stanford Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Why does Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital need to expand?
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, Packard Children’s is taking care of more critically ill children who require longer stays at the Hospital. Packard Children’s will also feature single-patient rooms to reduce infection rates, increase privacy and allow more space 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 and requires larger and more modern facilities to function properly.

How large is the expansion?
Packard Children’s plans include building 441,500 square feet of new facilities on the current site. These new facilities will add 104 patient beds; feature single-patient rooms; house surgical, diagnostic and treatment rooms; and include nursing, support and administrative offices and clinics.

Why do we need single-patient rooms?
Single-patient rooms are central to the new national standard of care because they increase patient safety, privacy and comfort. From a practical standpoint, federal privacy law, as specified in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), requires private rooms in new hospitals in order to ensure patient privacy. Also, single-patient rooms improve infection control. Single-patient rooms also provide more space for families to be with their loved one during treatment and recovery.

What is family-centered care?
Family-centered care is an approach to healthcare that is grounded in the pivotal and invaluable role a family plays in a patient’s recovery. Family-centered care is focused on providing both the facilities and the programs necessary to support the entire family during the healing process. Critical components of family-centered care include specific family-focused programs that encourage meaningful interaction between families, patients and caregivers. Studies show that having a family member or friend accompany a patient during treatment and recovery helps with patient understanding, physician understanding and patient involvement in decision-making.

What are the plans for the Stanford University School of Medicine?
The Stanford University School of Medicine is proposing to replace 415,000 square feet of outdated wet laboratory facilities 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 safety and seismic codes for research facilities, have together rendered the original facilities inadequate.

Why do the Hospitals need to increase in height?
The new Stanford Hospital is proposed to be a series of pavilions rising to a maximum height of 130 feet and connected by courtyards.  Packard Children’s expansion is proposed to be five stories at 85 feet. Modern hospital planning and design seeks to shrink the distances traveled from procedure room to patient room to better accommodate the needs of a patient. 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 house rooms for general medical and surgical patients after they have been evaluated and treated. In addition to better patient care, a vertical hospital design provides more efficient use of land.

Why are hospital buildings taller than conventional buildings?
Due to building code ventilation and structural requirements, hospitals are built with a significantly greater floor-to-floor height than conventional buildings. Floors with heavy procedural requirements are typically designed with 18-foot 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 four to eight feet.

What will happen to the physicians and the dentists who have offices on Welch Road?
Preliminary planning indicates that three office buildings will be affected by the seismic safety and Renewal project. The Hospitals are working with the healthcare professionals at 1101 Welch, 701 Welch and 703 Welch regarding opportunities to relocate to renovated medical office space in the region.