Stanford University Medicine, the name for a new outpatient clinic in Redwood City set to open in December 2008, was launched during ceremonies at the site on Jan. 26. Wielding shovels that may never see a spec of dirt are, from left, critical care medicine specialist Norman Rizk, senior associate dean for clinical affairs; Helen Wilmot, vice president for clinic operations; Mark Tortorich, vice president for planning, design and construction; Barbara Pierce, Redwood City mayor; Martha Marsh, SHC president and CEO; and Jerry Shefren, vice president for ambulatory services.

With Redwood City’s mayor at their side, Stanford hospital and medical school dignitaries were welcomed Jan. 26 to Redwood City to celebrate Stanford Hospital & Clinic’s (SHC) progress toward launching a 223,000-square-foot, Outpatient Center scheduled to open in December 2008. The four-building campus, renamed as Stanford University Medicine, was briefly the site of Excite@home in 1999 and is being completely reconfigured for academic medical outpatient care, nearly doubling SHC’s overall outpatient capacity.

Services:
Orthopaedic Spine Center
Neurosurgery Spine Center
Arthritis & Joint Replacement Center
Pain Management Center
Sports Medicine Center
Hand & Upper Extremity Center
Orthopaedic Specialties Center
Occupational and Physical Therapy Center
Ambulatory Surgery Center
Imaging Center
Laboratory and Blood Draw
Sleep Medicine Center
Medical Dermatology Center
Surgical Dermatology Center

Facilities:
96 exam rooms
39 procedure/treatment rooms
8 operating rooms
36 prep/recovery stations
24 sleep rooms
100 offices, including primary
offices for faculty physicians

Renovations:
More than 220,000 square feet of buildings at 400 Broadway in Redwood City

Timeline:
Project announced: February 2006
Completion of first phase and
move-in of announced services: December 2008
Architect: Anshen + Allen / General Contractor: DPR Construction

To get a sense of what is coming — and changing — we talked with two key project leaders, Jerry Shefren, a physician and SHC’s vice president for ambulatory services; and Helen Wilmot, vice president for clinic operations and the project lead for Stanford University Medicine.

Q: You’re calling this clinic Stanford University Medicine at Redwood City. Why the name?

WILMOT: At our celebration in January we unveiled a descriptive name for the center, which we’re simply calling Stanford University Medicine, because we believe that our patients will see this new Outpatient Center as simply synonymous or emblematic of the care that Stanford provides. The name transcends the components that in fact bring care to the community — Stanford Hospital and Clinics and the School of Medicine.

Q: Is this a satellite clinic?

SHEFREN: No. Essentially we are moving key services into a new location that has been situated and designed explicitly for SHC outpatient care — including outstanding support for our physicians and other staff. Stanford University Medicine Redwood City will be home for those faculty members and staff who will be providing care there, and offices are being designed to meet Medical School criteria. And for patients in the specialties represented, it will likely be the only location they will need to visit for outpatient needs. The new center will create some significant changes in the flow of patients through the system, and those changes will be positive. The bottom line is that we are designing a patient-centric center virtually from scratch. We’re not taking a building and then figuring how we can put everything we need in there.

Q: But aren’t the buildings already in place?

WILMOT: The interiors are being completely rebuilt to our specifications. The shell of the four buildings on site are giving us plenty of flexibility to build what we and our patients want.

Q: There’s been a lot of talk of ambience. How is this new center special?

WILMOT: The first thing that comes to mind when you think SHC are beautiful gardens and courtyards visible from almost all public areas. Patients and everyone who comes to Stanford University Medicine in Redwood City will have a similar feeling of light and space. We have lobby and lounge areas that will be designed by experts familiar both with medical centers and with the hospitality features of hotels. Quite frankly, I think all of us feel more comfortable entering a building that doesn’t just scream “hospital” at us. We learned some patient-friendly approaches from the Cancer Center, and we’re applying those lessons and more in Redwood City. This Center not only will be welcoming, but it will be designed to optimize the IT [information technology] and imaging technology that will continue to develop in the coming decades.

Q: Just what is going into the new Center?

SHEFREN: The largest single component is our Orthopaedics Center (35,120 square feet), including sports medicine, arthritis & joint, spine, hand & upper extremities and other specialties. We’ll have eight ORs and 24 PACU beds. Stanford’s pioneering Sleep Medicine Clinic (18,315 square feet), founded by Dr. William Dement, will be moving in with sleep study bedrooms for overnight monitoring and its premier associated research program. Stanford’s Pain Center (7,200 square feet) will move to the Redwood City center as well. Radiology’s Imaging Center (16,000 square feet) will be offering three CT and three MRI scanners, six general X-ray rooms integrated into the Orthopaedic Clinics, two radiofrequency rooms, one ultrasound room, and one bone densitometry room. The Dermatology Center will be occupying a significant footprint, 18,315 square feet, to provide comprehensive medical and surgical services in the new clinic. All of these are core services for each specialty.

WILMOT: Of course we’ll also have the full range of support facilities, wonderful staff and faculty lounge facilities, a call center, social services, and administration.

Q: What about primary care or emergency services?

WILMOT: There will be no primary care, emergency, urgent care or drop-in services. The specialized nature of the facility precludes us offering that, and we’ll be posting on-site messages to that effect. Community emergencies are well served in Redwood City at a Kaiser facility a few minutes away. We’ve held extensive community meetings, and I believe our neighbors in the Friendly Acres neighborhood of Redwood City understand what we will be providing on site and have indicated a high level of enthusiasm for their new neighbor.

Q: You mention that the faculty will be housed in the center. What about other Medical School functions?

SHEFREN: That’s important to emphasize. The facility was designed from day one with the needs not only of our faculty, but all of the needs of an academic medical center. This includes rooms designed specifically for patient conferences, as well as larger rooms for grand rounds, offices and workspaces for residents, fellows and others so that the academic mission will be well integrated with clinical activities. By the way, the clinical information system improvements we’re planning for the Hospital as a whole will operate seamlessly in the Redwood City center, and that’s going to mean it’s easier for doctors practicing there to communicate, chart patient activities, integrate research and clinical data appropriately, make cell phone calls, etc. And when communication works for the doctors there, that will benefit our referring community and patients as well.

Q: Let’s back up for those who may not have studied the recent history here. Why are you building a clinic five miles or so from the main campus?

SHEFREN: For one thing we needed the space for our clinics to expand in an environment that was created just for them. There simply wasn’t space available on or near the campus, let alone space where we could build a facility that was designed essentially from the ground up for our clinical programs in generously spaced building shells.

Q: But why Redwood City?

WILMOT: We were able to secure a suitable site that was already zoned for medical use. That meant we didn’t need to apply for a zoning variance, an expensive and time consuming process for us and the local governments. But that being said, the location midway between Marsh Road and Woodside Road off Highway 101, with parking for 1,175 vehicles represents a wonderful convenience for our patients. The SHC main campus seems convenient to those of us who come here every day, but for a patient, trying to find SHC can be complicated and fraught with traffic challenges on local streets. Because of easy freeway access, for many of our patients traveling from the North, South, and East Bay (or further), the Redwood City site is probably as convenient — or more so — than the SHC main campus, which requires patients to negotiate street traffic from Highway 101 or 280.

SHEFREN: Our service area includes both Santa Clara and San Mateo counties, so it makes sense and offers convenience to have a presence in the northern half of our service area.

Q: People passing by may notice that there are four buildings at the Redwood City location. What specifically will each contain?

WILMOT: When we open in December 2008, we’ll have two buildings occupied by our clinics, a third building that will house campus support departments and faculty offices. The fourth building will be administrative space for a variety of ancillary services, notably IT, that will also be available for clinical space as we need it in the future. Furthermore, a large conference facility that will be ideal for grand rounds or visiting programs, such as CME, will also be located in the fourth building.

Q: Will patients have to travel back and forth between the main campus and Redwood City?

SHEFREN: No, as we’ve said, the new campus is designed to provide all outpatient care for each respective clinical service. Specific lab tests, for example, might need to be sent to the main campus for processing, but the patient experience, in that case normally a blood drawing, will occur in Redwood City.

Q: What about services left behind?

SHEFREN: On the short-term there will be more space available in Palo Alto, and our teams will be working to ensure that modern services and amenities will be at a very high standard. But the comprehensive answer is that the Redwood City facility is well integrated into the comprehensive plans for Stanford Medical Center. These include an entire reconfiguration of clinical services in the coming decades when the medical center in Palo Alto is rebuilt to meet seismic and other criteria. Meanwhile, Stanford University Medicine in Redwood City is the next step in an exciting future.

Once the home of Silicon Valley’s now defunct Excite@home, these buildings are being completely refurbished from the inside out to provide customized clinic space
for Stanford in Redwood City.