A $50 million donation to Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital aims to “keep us on the cutting edge” for decades to come, Cottage Health CEO Ron Werft said.
Werft said he is grateful to philanthropists Richard and Mary Compton “for their generosity but also for their trust and their confidence in the work that’s done at Cottage.”
That doesn’t happen without the everyday hard work of the health care professionals, he added.
The $50 million donation to the Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital Foundation announced Tuesday is the largest single gift in the organization’s history.
The Comptons previously gave $15 million for an endowment during Cottage Health’s seven-year fundraising campaign that hit $150 million this year. Cottage Health operates three local hospitals, urgent care clinics and other health care facilities.
Werft told Noozhawk that the increased gift will create a Compton Center for Medical Excellence and Innovation to “bring together a number of our internal leaders and external regional and national experts.”
The Comptons believe Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital “has the wherewithal to be one of the best teaching hospitals in the country,” Werft said. “That’s an inspiration to us and a wonderful challenge to us to make the very best use of their trust in us.”
Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital’s residency programs for internal medicine, general surgery, radiology and pediatrics have about 80 people in them. The programs aim to expand their capacity and possibly add another specialty in the future, Werft told Noozhawk.
“We have 700 physicians on staff, and more than 100 of them went through our teaching program,” he noted.
Werft said his staff will be meeting with faculty, research and board leadership in the next six months to develop a plan for the Compton Center for Medical Excellence and Innovation. They want to move quickly but thoughtfully, he said.
The vision for the center is to track and implement emerging technologies for medical advances and health care operations, Werft said. It will be housed within Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital, not a new building.
“The pace of change in health care has never been more rapid than it is right now,” Werft said, specifically mentioning the expansion of telemedicine and electronic health records.
During the pandemic, “there was a tremendous acceleration and acceptance of virtual care as an accepted method meeting a portion of our health care needs,” he said.
As one example of operational innovation, they’ll be looking for ways staff can spend less time on paperwork and more time with patients.
“Electronic health records advanced medicine in many important ways but also can contribute to burnout” among medical staff, he said.
Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital will be opening its expanded simulation center next year, which has mannequins used for clinical staff training and competency assessments.
The larger simulation center was designed after site visits to other academic health centers, and Werft said “it will rival anything you see elsewhere in the country.”
In a statement, Mary Compton said, “When people ask how we chose Cottage for this gift, the spark came from our friends — some are doctors and nurses — who work or have worked at Cottage. They are some of the brightest and best people you’ll ever meet. And we thought if Cottage recognizes the importance of having such quality people, it must be a forward-looking institution.”
“Cottage Health is eternally grateful to Mary and Richard Compton for their vision for our community,” board chair Steven Zola said in a statement. “This unprecedented gift will inspire groundbreaking new ideas and strategies to continue lifesaving advances in research and the compassionate care Cottage is dedicated to delivering.”