Miranda Ashland was 6 months old when she received a liver transplant at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital. Today, she is a healthy 17-year-old who spoke at Thursday’s groundbreaking ceremony for the hospital’s $1.2-billion-dollar expansion, scheduled to open in December 2016.
The expansion is necessary, according to hospital CEO and President Christopher G. Dawes, because “we were turning children away.” (Story continues below.)
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The new facility, located at the corner of Quarry and Welch Roads on the Stanford campus, will stand next to the existing children’s hospital, which was built in 1991. The building will add 104 beds for a total of 361 in the combined facilities. Seven new operating rooms will almost double the current surgical capacity. New patient rooms, the majority of which will be private, will feature fold-out double beds, closets, large TVs and private bathrooms to accommodate children’s families and visitors.
“The best way to take care of a child is actually to take care of the whole family,” Dawes said.
Nicole Neal, a new mother, knows this firsthand. Her daughter, Audrey, was born at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital just five months ago. Neal said, when was in the hospital, her obstetrician continually asked what could be done to make her husband feel more comfortable or more included in the process. After Audrey’s birth, Neal was diagnosed with a rare medical condition. She was impressed when the head of High-Risk Obstetrics asked for her feedback on the way he managed her case. Patients like Neal who give birth in the new facility will have access to quiet places for their family members to wait and private patient rooms. There will also be age-appropriate playrooms for children and teen patients.
Private donors, including the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, Hewlett-Packard, Apple and John A. and Susan Sobrato, have contributed $250 million to the expansion so far. The rest of the project’s funding will come from hospital income and reserves, public bonds and further donor contributions.
Architects of Perkins+Will broke the ground at Thursday’s ceremony. Their sustainable designs for the innovative facility include on-site water collection, wind turbines, recycling infrastructure, electric vehicle charging stations and native plants in the outdoor gardens. More than 3.5 acres of healing outdoor spaces and greenery will accompany the 521,000-square-foot expansion. This is nearly twice the size of the existing 293,000-square-foot facility. It is a building designed for the future, Dawes said.
