Community Benefit Programs

Healing Arts Program
El Camino Hospital’s innovative, humanistic Healing Arts Program provides a variety of complementary therapies to patients that facilitate a speedier, less stressful recovery process. These therapies include relaxation programs on the hospital’s closed-circuit television channels; soothing performances by roving musicians; the cheerful antics of a visiting jester; painting classes for cancer, heart and vascular patients; massage therapy; and canine therapy. 

Health Library and Resource Center
El Camino Hospital’s unique Health Library and Resource Center provides healthcare information and support services to the general public. The extensive, patient-centered medical library is an affiliate of Plane Tree and is designed to empower patients and families seeking knowledge about a broad variety of health issues. The resource center provides wide-ranging services for caregivers and family members tending to the needs of an elderly or ill relative or friend, including referrals for respite or in-home care and assisted or skilled nursing facilities. Professional staff offer wellness programs such as blood pressure screenings, consultations with dieticians and pharmacists, lectures and support groups, and can advise patients and families in all age brackets about health insurance and advanced care directives.

RotaCare Clinic and Immunization Program
The RotaCare Clinic serves our community’s uninsured, low-income populations by providing free basic and preventive medical services, chronic care management, medications, patient education and referrals. Its mission is to provide relief to those with the most need and least access to care. In operation since 1996, the clinic currently provides more than 6,000 health services to the underserved annually. Volunteers, including physicians, nurses, pharmacists, social workers, and interpreters/translators staff the clinic, which is run as a collaborative effort with local Rotary Clubs, El Camino Hospital, El Camino Hospital Foundation and other organizations.

Hospital Medical Services

Cancer Care
El Camino Hospital’s state-of-the-art Cancer Center boasts technology not typically available at a community hospital, a staff of extraordinary physicians who are trained in the latest techniques, and excellent clinical care coupled with a patient- and family-centered approach to the treatment of cancer. All diagnostic and treatment services are part of a single comprehensive program, and they are located in one place. This facilitates a multidisciplinary approach for treating the disease and eases the patient’s ability to navigate the process. 

Foundation funds help the Cancer Center purchase the latest equipment. They also support the Cancer Center’s research and clinical trials program, giving patients access to investigational therapies comparable to those offered by nationally known centers while remaining in their home community under the care of their current physicians. Further grants underwrite El Camino Hospital’s Palliative Care Program, which seeks to optimize the quality of patients’ lives. In addition, the Foundation underwrites community screenings for skin cancer, and its Hope to Health women’s philanthropy group raises money every year for comfort care packs that are given to cancer patients.

Heart and Vascular Care
El Camino Hospital’s state-of-the-art, award-winning Heart and Vascular Institute aims to become the premier center of excellence on the West Coast. It offers a wide range of top-rated cardiac and vascular services from prevention to diagnosis, from general cardiology to advanced surgery. Its specialists are leaders in electrophysiology and the development of minimally invasive techniques to treat a variety of cardiovascular diseases.

Foundation grants underwrite innovative programs at the Heart and Vascular Institute. Currently, these include a Fellows Program whose purpose is to cross train top-notch physicians in multiple disciplines of cardiovascular medicine and a Carotid Artery Stent Registry for clinical trials.

The Foundation also helped to establish and continues to support El Camino Hospital’s pioneering South Asian Heart Center (SAHC) which strives to combat the extraordinarily high incidence of coronary artery disease in people who trace their ancestry to India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka. SAHC provides health assessments, personalized, comprehensive health plans and one-on-one case management. It also strives to increase physician awareness of the unique cardiovascular risks faced by the South Asian community.

Technology and Innovation

Equipment
Foundation funds help El Camino Hospital purchase the latest technology and equipment. Most recently they facilitated the purchase of the da Vinci S HD surgical robot, the most advanced tool currently available for minimally invasive surgery. El Camino Hospital now has one of the busiest robotic surgery programs on the West Coast, and the hospital’s dedicated robotic team currently treats patients for prostate cancer, obesity, infertility, gynecological cancers and other women’s health issues.

Fogarty Institute for Innovation
Donations to the El Camino Hospital Foundation helped bring the Fogarty Institute for Innovation to the El Camino Hospital campus. Run by Dr. Thomas J. Fogarty, an internationally recognized cardiovascular surgeon and innovator, this not-for-profit institute focuses on teaching medical innovators how to translate their ideas into practical applications that improve patient care.

Genomic Medicine Institute
Donations to El Camino Hospital Foundation helped establish the Genomic Medicine Institute in March 2009. The first its kind in the nation, its mission is to offer patients ready access to state-of-the-art genetic testing, genetic counseling and genomic therapy. This new approach to medicine will lead to earlier intervention and prevention, help doctors better manage patients' disease process and enable doctors to prescribe the treatments that will work best for an individual patient. By establishing a pioneering center of excellence in genomic medicine at this early stage, El Camino Hospital is positioning itself to be a leader in the field while also helping to propel its advance and ultimate adoption into the mainstream of medical care.

Nursing

Scholarships
In partnership with the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the El Camino Hospital Foundation is working to address the critical nursing shortage faced by hospitals in California and across the United States. Together we are providing scholarships to top nursing students at San Jose State University. This program is designed to identify, support and ultimately recruit to El Camino Hospital our community’s top nursing students.

Leadership
The Foundation recently gave a major grant to the nursing leadership at El Camino Hospital for the development and implementation of a program called Evidence-Based Practice (EBP). This program enables nurses to bring the results of new and existing research directly to patient care, thereby improving the patient’s safety and experience, and resulting in high-quality outcomes. It will create a culture of inquiry and innovation at El Camino Hospital that is usually available only to nurses in an academic setting, which will help El Camino Hospital maintain its prestigious American Nurses Credentialing Center Magnet status while creating better care for patients and leading to increased nurse satisfaction.

100,000 Lives Campaign
With another grant to El Camino Hospital Foundation from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, El Camino Hospital has been able to participate in the 100,000 Lives Campaign, a national initiative to implement six scientifically based clinical interventions that address leading sources of mortality and complications within hospitals.