El Camino Hospital Turns 50

is celebrating this month the 50th anniversary of its sister site in Mountain View. 

The hospital officially reached its golden milestone on Sept. 1, but plans to have its anniversary bash 1-4 p.m., Saturday, Oct. 15, at its Mountain View campus, 2500 Grant Rd.

The El Camino Hospital organization operates both facilites under the same medical license, which are managed by the same executive team and governed by the same board of directors, and has the same non-profit status.

According to hospital spokeswoman Judy Twitchell, the hospital was started by a group of Los Altos physicians who wanted to build a facility "in an area that would be more convenient to residents of northern Santa Clara County."

A measure to form a hospital district was put on the ballot in 1956, and it received overwhelming support. Residents of Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Mountain View and Sunnyvale approved the new hospital district and a $7.3 million bond to cover construction costs.

The Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors then appointed a board of five members to find a perfect location for the new hospital. That ended up being a 20-acre orchard on Grant Road in Mountain View.

Board Chairman Billy Russell of Los Altos first suggested the name “El Camino Hospital.”

A special groundbreaking ceremony took place in the Grant Road orchard, and construction officially began in 1958.

Three years later, a 300-bed, four-story hospital stood in the former orchard. At the stroke of midnight on Sept. 1, 1961, El Camino Hospital opened its doors for the first time.

Longtime hospital employee and volunteer Judy Van Dyck recalls, “A private room was just $30 a day when the hospital opened. A semi-private room was $26, and the nursery was $10 a day.”

The demand proved to be so great that by the end of the first week, the hospital was full, and admissions were temporarily halted.

“One of the things about El Camino is that it’s always been independent, so it moves quickly in terms of making decisions and being able to attract doctors and get equipment and staff," Twitchell said.

ECH was one of the first hospitals in the world to implement a computerized medical information system in 1971—at a time when most people in the world had never even heard the word “computer."

Twitchell said the joint project was with Lockheed, located in Sunnyvale.

Even to this day, Twitchell explained the percentage of ECH physicians or other caregivers using computers for keeping patient records and charts is one of the highest in the country for a hospital.

ECH has a long history of accolades and honors.

In 2009, Popular Science Magazine named it “the most technologically advanced hospital in the world,” thanks to advances in areas like robotic science, such as the “cyber knife”—a robotic type of radiation therapy used in surgery that can excise tumors very precisely, and can sense movements of the patient’s body like breathing and adjust itself in an extremely accurate way.

Hospitals and Health Networks Magazine, a publication of the American Hospital Association, has named ECH as one of the “100 Most Wired Hospitals” for five years running.

ECH ranks high in terms of patient care, too.

In 2000, Professional Resource Consultants, a patient satisfaction market research firm, named ECH its top hospital for inpatient care, out of 120 client hospitals nationwide. The hospital also received the President’s Award for Customer Satisfaction, out of 300 hospitals that participated in the Professional Resource Consultants survey—and was the first hospital to score high enough on the survey to earn the award.

However, the hospital has not been without its challenges.

The board of directors decided suddenly and without explanation earlier this year to allow former CEO Ken Graham’s contract to expire on June 30, barely two months after he received the 2011 Gold Medal Award from the American College of Health Care Executives, an international professional society of more than 30,000 health care executives. and also acts as interim CEO. Meanwhile, the firm Russell Reynolds continues to conduct a nationwide search for a new, permanent CEO.

In 2000, though, a challenge of a different variety presented an unexpected opportunity for something wonderful for ECH—a new hospital. Newer, stricter state codes for earthquake safety meant that a large overhaul of the decades-old hospital building would be needed, in order to comply.

However, ECH decided it was time to go a different route.

“The old building needed so much retrofitting, they decided it was just easier to build a new building,” said Van Dyck.

The local community pulled together with the financial support once again, and construction on a brand new hospital began in 2006. An ultra-modern, new building opened in November 2009.

“It looks like a hotel,” said Van Dyck, describing the new private rooms for patients and all the careful, nature-inspired touches placed around the hospital.

The Rev. Mary Ellen Garnier, a former nurse who is now the hospital's chaplain, has been with the hospital on and off since 1970. Garnier says she never could have imagined what the hospital would become when she first walked through its doors more than 40 years ago.

Just two months before the new hospital opened in November 2009, ECH gained yet another building—that of the former Community Hospital of Los Gatos.

“Taking advantage of an unexpected opportunity in the local market, the hospital acquired the assets of the former Community Hospital of Los Gatos and opened it as ” said Twitchell. “As a result, five more communities in the West Valley corridor were added to the hospital’s growing service area.”