Seton Medical Center Takes a Look Back at 40 Years of Care
DALY CITY — Medicine was a lot different when the Daughters of Charity founded California's first free clinic in San Francisco. The year was 1913, the clinic was Mary's Help and the mission was to provide medical care for the poor.
The facility would eventually outgrow its building and, in 1965, 27 ambulances carrying Mary's Help patients would begin a convoy to Daly City to set up in a new building that would be the hospital's new home. Back then, the area was more rural and the new hospital was built on the site of a former cabbage patch.
Now Seton Medical Center, the hospital is celebrating its 40th anniversary in Daly City. Hospital staffers are proud of what the organization has accomplished and have high hopes for the future.
A Long History
If there's anyone who knows the hospital, it's LeeRoy Eyheralde. Eyheralde, 66, the clinical nurse educator, has worked for the organization for 45 years — longer than anyone else there. He works from 4 a.m. to 4 p.m. six days a week, and he uses that time to build relationships with the patients.
On Wednesday, one of the patients on hisrounds was Allie Ortega, 85, who has been coming to the hospital since it opened in 1965.
Ortega, who came to Seton for leg surgery, lay in a room with a bird's eye view of Interstate 280 and Daly City. Eyheralde held her hand while she recalled Ortega's visits to the hospital over the years.
“I've known him so long, I don't want to remember how long,” Ortega said. “LeeRoy looks the same as he did when I first met him — he hasn't changed.”
Eyheralde says he's seen plenty of changes in medical care over the years, but what he likes most is that nurses are now a more integral part of treating patients. Where, in the past, nurses were simply given a set of instructions to carry out, now they collaborate with doctors and are part of the decision-making process.
Eyheralde was one of five workers being honored at a black-tie charity fund-raiser at the Fairmont Hotel.
Seton Medical Center now serves thousands of patients per year and its emergency room alone logs some
25,000 visits. It's a member of the Daughters of Charity National Health System, which includes five other California hospitals and, since the hospital is supported by a Catholic organization, it doesn't offer services that the church opposes.
Looking toward the future, the hospital will need to build a new facility to comply with updated seismic safety standards. A preliminary design calls for a new hospital on the same site, to be built just south of the existing building. The plan is to keep the current hospital open while the new one is built, so as not to interrupt service. The $300 million to $350 million project would include more parking and about 30 fewer beds.
One thing that isn't under consideration is moving out of Daly City, said Bernadette Smith, the hospital's president and CEO.
“Our future is here in Daly City and the surrounding community,”Smith said. “This is the community we'll be staying in; this is the community we're committed to.”
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Source: San Mateo County Times.