Winter 2013

Even with the best medical care, a trip to the hospital can be taxing, even traumatic, for both patient and family. Just the hours spent waiting for procedures and surgeries can take their toll.

What if the waiting room wasn't a place of hard chairs, fluorescent lights, and cold air conditioning, but rather of winding gardens, sitting nooks, and a meditation space? What if a hospital were built with this kind of wellness in mind?

This vision for the new Stanford Hospital inspired local philanthropist Lynne Frank to commit $2 million to the project. Lynne has provided the naming gift for the Family Resource Center, a key to the future building’s holistic focus.

As a former special education teacher who worked in hospital settings, and as a patient "many times over," Lynne understands what visitors are going through.

"I have had that middle-of-the-night medical emergency," she says. "You need good care, close by, delivered by outstanding people."

When the new Stanford Hospital opens its glass doors in 2018, visitors will step into a soaring three-level atrium. The facility will be medically state of the art, but with some pleasant surprises.

For example, the Garden Floor will focus on visitors' experience beyond their clinical care. Located on the third floor, it's a place for people to pause and reflect before moving upstairs to recovery rooms or down to the demands of the outside world beyond the hospital entrance.

It is here amidst gardens and terraces that the Family Resource Center will provide for the needs of visiting families with comfortable seating, computer access, and health information. The center, to be named soon, will honor Lynne Frank and her late husband, Dr. Roy M. Frank.

Lynne has supported Stanford programs before, from research to clinical and spiritual care to medical training. In 2006, she made a major gift to the Goodman Simulation Center in the existing hospital to help doctors hone their techniques before practicing on patients.

Giving has always been part of her life, says Lynne.

"I was a middle-class girl growing up in the Sunset District of San Francisco. But from an early age, my family modeled what it meant to give back. My grandparents had a Tzedakah—a charity box—in their living room. It was a part of our everyday lives."

From her home just across Sand Hill Road, Lynne can see the progress of the hospital’s construction almost daily. It gives her peace of mind to know such a place will be so close.

But more than that, she says, "It feels good to do this."