October 27, 2017 – El Camino Hospital Foundation channeled the Summer of Love at the 22nd annual El Camino Heritage Golf Tournament at Sharon Heights Golf & Country Club on October 23, 2017. The tournament raised $214,000 to support the expansion of the clinical trials program at El Camino Hospital’s Taft Center for Clinical Research. One hundred twenty five golfers enjoyed a beautiful day on the course and 75 more supporters joined them for the reception, celebration dinner, and live auction. Raffle sales were brisk, bidding at the live auction was spirited, and attendees raised their paddles generously for the fund-in-need appeal.
“It is very unusual for a community hospital to have the level of clinical research that El Camino Hospital has,” Dr. Frederick St. Goar, medical director of the Norma Melchor Heart & Vascular Institute at El Camino Hospital and inventor of a minimally invasive technology for the treatment of mitral valve regurgitation, told the crowd as he introduced the fund-in-need appeal. “Clinical research enables El Camino Hospital to offer patients the latest and greatest. It is a privilege to be involved at a hospital that allows us to develop technologies that have global impact.”
“Because we are smaller, we can get studies approved faster, and because our volumes are high enough that we can get studies enrolled, industry is happy,” says Dr. Daniel Kaiser, an electrophysiologist who is running his own study to test a new paradigm for the treatment of heart failure. “So we can come in with the fastest, most groundbreaking research in the country done here at El Camino Hospital, done quickly, and offered to patients that aren’t offered anywhere else.”
Golf tournament proceeds are already making a difference. The Taft Center for Clinical Research has hired an additional research coordinator to manage up to a dozen more studies at a time, which will provide even greater opportunities for patients and physicians. Three new studies were just approved.