Health care past and future

0 Comments | Oakland Tribune, Nov 11, 2008 | by Dana Guzzetti

Dr. Michael Epstein talked about the 1952 operating room at the Concord hospital that contained three doors: "One to the front porch, one to the kitchen, and one to the surgery preparation room. While they were operating, a delivery man walked through carrying three cases of Coca-Cola."

That was one vivid description among many medical stories in a three-hour "Breaking Ground, Then and Now" retrospective by the John Muir Health Foundation at the Lesher Center for the Arts on Monday night.

Local historians helped put John Muir Medical Center's major projects at the Walnut Creek and Concord campuses in perspective, during a program moderated by Mark Curtis, former KTVU morning news anchor.

Contrasting the past with the six-story, high-tech patient care tower in Concord and the new five-story, 350,000-square-foot addition to the Walnut Creek campus both now under construction, J. Kendall Anderson, president and CEO of John Muir Health, emphasized the significance of community contributions.

Epstein agreed.

"It is astonishing how small communities have come together," he said. "Now we have world-class facilities, thanks to the community."

Historians shared their thoughts on what sparked the growth of local hospital services.

"The Broadway Shopping Center was the most significant development," said Brad Rovanpera, Walnut Creek public information officer, who compiled "Walnut Creek, A Look Back."

Paul Larson is a longtime Concord resident, Concord Historical Society activist and descendent of the early Randall and Keller families. He attributed hospital facility upgrades to dynamic population growth of the area, particularly noting that Concord was originally an area of 19 square blocks and essentially did not exceed that size until the late 1940s.

"It was transportation. The (Caldecott) tunnel was built in 1937," said John Keibel, teacher, engineer and member of the Concord Historical Society board of directors, noting that freeways and BART brought added impacts.

Keibel is author of local history publications, including the upcoming "Behind the Barbed Wire: the History of Naval Weapons Station Concord."

Their historical presentations were illustrated by a series of vintage photographs. Images of multiple transformations at the corner of Mt. Diablo Boulevard and Main Street in Walnut Creek began with the Oak Saloon, then Great Western Bank, followed by Tiffany's, which demonstrated remarkable change.

With each tale of the past, the picture of patient care improved. Larson related how, in the 1930s, his pregnant mother drove to see her doctor in Oakland, braving the narrow hairpin curves of Fish Ranch Road to get there.

"A gear failed and she had to ride the brakes all the way down the other side," Larson said. "The wheels were on fire, but she made it to Alta Bates."

There was a happy ending because later Larson was safely born at that hospital.

Also in the 1930s, Concord's lone physician, Henry W. Stirewalt, suggested the need for a hospital to his newly arrived Canadian nurse Edna Gallagher Haywood.

Haywood convinced her father-in-law that he should mortgage his ranch to loan her the money to purchase a small wood-frame house on East Avenue in Concord, and soon patients began to find major medical care closer to home. But medical specialists remained rare.

"There were no specialists -- no surgeons, no gynecologists and no pediatricians. General practitioners did everything in 1952," Epstein said.

Some even wondered if the first surgeon arriving in Concord could make a living. Usually the first specialists were pediatricians, he said.

By the late 1950s, there were medical specialists practicing in Walnut Creek and they demanded a higher quality facility, he said. Through community contributions and their own ingenuity, the physicians in the mid-1960s jointly built a new, quality-care facility, named John Muir by a local fifth-grader.

Dr. Michael Levine, John Muir Foundation board director, is talking to the community about the two new John Muir Health construction projects.

"We just want to talk to everyone about the scope and significance of these projects," he said. "Something about health care relates to everyone's life."

Reach Dana Guzzetti at danaguzzetti@hotmail.com.