User:LKauffman/PAMF

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This user page or section is in the middle of an expansion or major revamping.
You are welcome to assist in its construction by editing it as well.
Please view the edit history should you wish to contact the person who placed this template. If this article has not been edited in several days, please remove this template. Consider not tagging with a deletion tag unless the page hasn't been edited in several days.

Palo Alto Medical Foundation
Type	Non-profit Organization, Medical Clinic
Genre	Corporate histories
Founded	Palo Alto, CA, U.S. (1930)
Founder	Dr. Russel Van Arsdale Lee
Headquarters	Mountain View, CA, U.S.
No. of locations	32
Area served	San Francisco East Bay, San Francisco Peninsula and Santa Cruz
Industry	Medical Services, Patient Education, Medical Research
Services	Specialty Medical Care
Website	www.pamf.org

The Palo Alto Medical Foundation for Health Care, Research and Education (PAMF) is a not-for-profit health care organization that provides care to patients in the Northern California counties of Alameda, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz and San Mateo.

PAMF is part of the Sutter Health family of not-for-profit hospitals and physician organizations, which serve more than 100 communities in Northern California. ^[1]

1 History
- 1.1 Santa Cruz Medical Clinic
- 1.2 Camino Medical Group
2 Locations
3 References

[edit] History

The Palo Alto Medical Foundation grew out of one of California's first multispecialty physician groups, the Palo Alto Medical Clinic (PAMC), which was founded in 1930 by Russel V.A. Lee, M.D. At the time, the Palo Alto Medical Clinic was one of the first clinics in the region to offer a specialist in obstetrics and surgery, and a pediatrician — PAMC founding physician Ester B. Clark, M.D., who also happened to be one of Palo Alto’s first female physicians. ^[2]

As Palo Alto, CA, and Stanford University grew, so did PAMC. The group soon developed a synergistic relationship with Stanford, both helping to teach its medical students and recruiting many of its new physicians from among the Stanford graduates. In the 1940s, the clinic began providing care for Stanford University students for a flat fee, creating one of the first prepaid health plans in the nation. ^[3]

In 1950, the Palo Alto Medical Research Foundation (now the PAMF Research Institute) was created as a center for basic and clinical research, and PAMC became one of the first facilities in the country to offer radiation therapy for cancer patients in an outpatient setting. Other research developments soon followed, including helping to develop laser surgery of the eye in the 1960s and outpatient surgery techniques in the 1970s.^[4]

By the 1970s, however, factors such as the growth of managed care and the rising cost for incoming doctors to buy into the partnership were threatening PAMC's future well being. To solve the problem, the for-profit physician group decided to create a non-profit foundation that would control its operations and assets. In 1981, the Palo Alto Medical Foundation (PAMF) was formed and a period of dynamic change began, including the opening of its second clinic location, the Fremont Center, in 1984, and the addition of an outpatient surgery center in 1986. ^[5]

In 1993, PAMF became a Sutter Health affiliate in order to tap new resources for growth. Work soon began on a new medical campus, and, in 1999, the 305,000-square-foot Palo Alto Clinic opened to patients. ^[6]

PAMF expanded further in 2000 when Camino Medical Group became a division of PAMF. Two years later, Sutter Santa Cruz[1] (comprised of the the Santa Cruz Medical Foundation,[2] the Sutter Maternity & Surgery Center[3] and the Visiting Nurse Association (VNA) of Santa Cruz County[4]) also became a PAMF division.^[7]

In 2005 and 2006, respectively, PAMF opened a primary and specialty clinic, and a women's health clinic in Redwood City, CA, to accommodate a growing patient population in southern San Mateo County. In 2006 it opened a clinic in Castro Valley, CA, and in 2007, it added a clinic in Dublin, CA. ^[8]

On January 1, 2008, the three medical groups that were affiliated with PAMF — Camino Medical Group (CMG), Palo Alto Medical Clinic (PAMC), and Santa Cruz Medical Clinic (SCMC) — voted to become one medical group.^[9] CMG and SCMC each had their own long histories of serving their communities and slowly expanding to give their patients advanced care and increasing health care choices.

[edit] Santa Cruz Medical Clinic

Founded in 1953 to serve what was then a small conservative coastal community, the Santa Cruz Medical Clinic (SCMC) group soon found itself caring for a broader patient community. In 1965, the University of California, Santa Cruz was established, and a younger more liberal community of students moved in. By then, SCMC had grown to 12 physicians, and it would double in size again by 1975. When SCMC became a Sutter Health affiliate in 1995, it had grown to include primary care in pediatrics and family medicine, and specialty care including surgery, urology, urgent care, and obstetrics and gynecology, as well as an off-site facility just for physical therapy. ^[10]

When SCMC became part of Sutter Health, it also created the non-profit Santa Cruz Medical Foundation (SCMF)[5] to manage its operations. This allowed SCMC to work with Sutter to create a free-standing licensed accredited hospital facility built specifically to offer state-of-the-art perinatal and medical/surgical services. The Sutter Maternity & Surgery Center of Santa Cruz — a joint project of Sutter Health and SCMF — opened to patients in March of 1996, and that same year, Sutter Santa Cruz (which included SCMF) became a PAMF affiliate. Two year later, in 1998, the Visiting Nurse Association (VNA) of Santa Cruz and Mid-Coast VNA affiliated with Sutter Santa Cruz. Before its merger with CMG and PAMC, the former SCMC included more than 130 providers.^[11]

[edit] Camino Medical Group

Camino Medical Group (CMG)[6] was founded in 1954 as the Sunnyvale Medical Clinic. Over the next 35 years, the original group of six doctors in a one-story building grew to 100 doctors in a multispecialty medical group operating out of five clinics in Sunnyvale, Santa Clara and Mountain View. ^[12]

In 1994, the group added 28 additional doctors and changed its name to Camino Medical Group. At the same time, it also established an integrated health care delivery system with El Camino Hospital. However, this partnership ended three years later. In 1997, the group re-established itself as an independent multispecialty group, becoming one of northern California's largest physician-owned medical groups, with more than 160 medical providers caring for 140,000 patients in the South Bay area.^[13]

Three years later, the group affiliated with PAMF to begin to operate as a not-for-profit entity and to create one of the largest multispecialty group practices in all of California. Before its merger with PAMC and SCMC, the former CMG had grown to grown to include more than 250 physicians. ^[14]