$25 million donation to children’s hospital from Carol and Ned Spieker follows their recent $26 million gift to university aquatics program
Stanford Medicine Children’s Health will renovate its West Building, including the Johnson Center for Pregnancy and Newborn Services, to provide more privacy for patients and comfort for families, the hospital announced.
The hospital has received a $25 million gift from Bay Area philanthropists Carol and Ned Spieker, which will help fund the changes.
“[Carol and Ned Spieker’s] generosity helps turn our vision for a completely reimagined space into reality — to serve and support more families from our community and beyond,” Luanne Smedley, executive director of the Johnson Center, stated.
The Spiekers both served as Class of 2016 Distinguished Careers Institute (DCI) fellows at Stanford. The couple told the Lucile Packard Foundation for Children’s Health that their children and grandchildren were born at the hospital.
“We care deeply about helping growing families in our community get the best possible care,” the Spiekers said in the hospital’s announcement.
“We feel fortunate that they are healthy and thriving, and we want to help ensure that future generations of moms and babies receive the support they need.”
The hospital welcomes about 4,500 babies each year — nearly a dozen per day — Smedley said, of which 70% are categorized as high-risk cases.
To accommodate patients with a higher standard of care, the West Building project is set to include private rooms for the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) and labor and delivery unit. The project will span multiple years and does not yet have a definite end date. The finished building will include 15 private infusion rooms and 14 larger exam rooms.
“Studies have shown that private rooms promote shortened hospital stays, support parents’ mental health, lower infection rates and create stronger family bonding,” Smedley, who also serves as the Johnson Center’s associate chief bursing officer, said.
Janene Ferch, a neonatologist at the hospital, noted the need for modernization, stating that the outdated building no longer meets recent standards for neonatal care. Ferch said the neonatal part of the hospital, located in the West Building, has “extremely crowded” spaces that don’t reflect the rest of the facility.
The children’s hospital opened a new main building in 2017. Still, the NICU and maternity wing stayed in the West Building, with renovation plans finally coming to fruition with the Spiekers’ donation. Fuerch said some of the units haven’t been “truly remodeled” since the West Building opened in 1991.
“We have been in the old hospital for this whole period of time, in an era where they used to put all the babies in the same room,” Fuerch said.
“Things in the last 20 years have shifted to more private rooms. We want parents at the bedside. We want them to have privacy to have conversations that the rest of the room doesn’t overhear. To enable that, you need a complete transformation, more space.”
Smedley said the NICU will transition from “large open-bay style rooms” to private rooms. The hospital’s gardens, lobby, and lounge will also undergo redesigns to provide more spaces for families to relax and connect.
Some of these updates have already been completed. In March, the NICU unveiled an infant nutrition lab, as well as 14 new private and semi-private rooms. This summer, the hospital opened an infusion clinic, an antepartum unit for high-risk pregnancies, and the Bass Center for Childhood Cancer and Blood Diseases. The new maternity unit now has over 50 private postpartum rooms, allowing patients’ partners to stay overnight comfortably.
Fuerch noted how the design of a hospital has a “dramatic” impact on patient recovery.
“Having two moms and two babies together [in one room] is way too hard actually to recover [and] rest,” Fuerch said. “Now, we have mostly private rooms — definitely a huge improvement for those moms and the well babies.”
NICU patients often have more extended hospital stays due to premature birth, developmental impediments and other complications. In these cases, mothers can go home after two to five days, but their babies sometimes remain in the hospital for many months.
“That’s a very long journey for the family filled with lots of trauma,” Fuerch said. “[Being] in there with their baby helps the parents heal much better and adapt to the difficult medical circumstances that they’re facing.”
However, she said the construction poses challenges to the West Building’s patients, who are “very sensitive to loud noises.”
“We have to shut down certain areas [and] move them to others to protect them from the noise that occurs when construction is happening,” Fuerch said. “Their hearing is developing, so we have to be very careful.”
Smedley said the construction is a “top priority” and will be “carried out in phases” so the West Building can remain open.
“It really is dependent on financial support, especially with cuts in Medicaid that have been really challenging for children’s hospitals around the country,” Fuerch said. “Philanthropy allows these changes to be made so that we can take the best possible care of our patients and their families.”
Recently, Lifestyles Magazine/Meaningful Influence also reported on some of the Spieker’s earlier philanthropy, which includes a US$26 million endowment to the men’s aquatics programs at the University of California, Berkeley (men’s swimming & diving and men’s water polo), described as the most significant gift in Cal Athletics history.