HMNMH Receives First Patients
AUGUST 4, 1975
Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital made its debut yesterdaywith standing room only in the emergency room.
The opening of the $9 million, 100-bed hospital marked the end of four years of effort by community leaders.
Although everything which could be moved in ahead of the time was, the patients and the equipment accompanying them had to me moved yesterday morning.
Ambulances and moving vans caravanned the five miles from Hillside Hospital on Soledad Canyon Road to HMNMH on McBean Parkway in Valencia.
Twenty-one patients were moved to the modern, two-story building, with the first two arriving at HMNMH at exactly 8:36 a.m. The first patient, 22-year-old Samuel Strickland of Little Rock, even arrived in one of the moving vans rather than an ambulance.
Strickland needed the larger vehicle because he is in traction as a result of a motorcycle accident. An 80-year-old Canyon Country woman, Marie Campbell was in the same convoy. She recently broke her hip and was escorted to HMNMH by Judge Adrian Adams president of the hospital’s Board of Trustees. Adams presented Mrs. Campbell with a corsage upon her arrival.
After the first patients arrived, me opening proceeded quickly. By 10 a.m. the first surgery at HMNMH was in progress and by 11 a.m. six emergency cases had been handled in the lavish 1800-sq.-foot emergency room. By noon Hillside-Hospital’s emergency room was closed. Until then the two hospitals had kept their emergency rooms simultaneously open. C. Thomas Collier, administrator of HMNMH, said there are no immediate plans about what to do with Hillside other than putting it up for sale.
By early afternoon HMNMH was functioning smoothly. Its emergency room was very busy, with its six beds filling almost as soon as they were emptied. By 2:30 p.m. three new patients had been admitted through the emergency room.
HMNMH is located on 25 acres of land donated by Newhall Land and Farming Company. The hospital itself has been under construction for two years, Adjacent to the gaily colored building, construction is continuing on a medical office building. This ls part of the comprehensive health care center planned for residents of the Santa Clarita Valley.
The new hospital is a general acute facility with 24-hour emergency service, surgery units, maternity and pediatrics departments, intensive and coronary care units, and a nuclear medicine department as well as laboratory and radiology departments. The building which just opened is the first phase of a planned 400-bed medical complex to be built over the next five years. The new building has more than two acres of space within it and is built around a central patio. Currently there are 65 physicians on its staff, as well as 250 employees for its 18 departments.
Ground was broken for the large hospital in September 1972. The Board of Trustees for the nonprofit corporation which operates HMNMH was selected in February 1971 and at that time it was anticipated the hospital would be completed in March 1974. Strikes and bad weather forcing slow arrivals of major equipment contributed to the opening’s delay.