The Lucile Packard Foundation for Children's Health has announced a $100 million gift from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation to modernize the obstetric and neonatal facilities at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital Stanford.

The gift, which boosts the foundation’s support of the hospital to $614 million, will help transform its existing west building by increasing the size of the labor and delivery unit so it can handle up to 20 percent more births and house the hospital's first-ever dedicated and physically separate unit for high-risk mothers who need to be hospitalized for days, weeks, or months before they deliver, ensuring rapid access to a state-of-the-art obstetric delivery suite. To that end, the facility will include 14 private labor rooms in a new labor and delivery unit, nine private antepartum rooms in a specially designed unit, 51 private postpartum rooms, 64 private neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) rooms, three new obstetric operating rooms, and a calmer and streamlined family-centered environment.

Nearly two-thirds of expectant mothers at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford are high-risk, with patients coming from across the state, the nation, and the world for treatment. The NICU will transition from having large, open rooms—which typically hold up to 10 babies, their parents and care teams, and medical equipment—to private rooms where parents can stay with their babies.

“It’s vital that more mothers and babies have access to Packard Children’s Hospital, in an enhanced environment that supports optimal physical and mental well-being,” said Yasser El-Sayed, division chief of maternal-fetal medicine and obstetrics, the Charles B. and Ann L. Johnson Professor at Stanford University School of Medicine, and obstetrician-in-chief at Stanford Children’s Health. “This reimagined space will also facilitate impactful scientific research studies, which will accelerate our commitment to advance maternal and infant health in California and beyond.” 

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