A decades-long dream comes true
Dr. Thomas C. Cesario, the longest serving dean in the history of the UC Irvine School of Medicine, was an infectious disease fellow when he arrived in 1971. At the time, doctors and residents commuted 12 miles from the university campus in Irvine to the aged county hospital built in 1914 in the City of Orange.
After the University of California Board of Regents acquired the county facility in 1976, he and many other faculty members lobbied for decades to persuade the university, the regents and state legislators to fund construction of a modern hospital on the Irvine campus, to be close to the medical school as well as to basic scientists working to find a cure for complex diseases.
Their hopes fizzled, but by 2006, work began on a new hospital on the UCI Health campus in Orange. When Douglas Hospital opened in 2009, Cesario was wowed by its gleaming tower and the latest in medical technologies.
But that was no match for the thrill of seeing UCI Health — Irvine, a state-of- the-art, acute care hospital, finally open last December on the university's north campus.
Now as UCI Health celebrates its 50th year delivering care to the people of Orange County, Cesario, 86, reflects on his early days at UCI Health — Orange, formerly named UCI Medical Center, on the challenges encountered over the years and, most of all, the dream of so many of his long-ago colleagues that has finally been realized.
"My wife, Mary, and I drove from Boston in a 1969 Pontiac with a new baby and our 3-year-old daughter Kristen (now chair of the medical school’s Department of Dermatology). We came down Interstate 5, passed Disneyland and I stopped to get a look at what was then the Orange County Medical Center.
"It wasn’t much different than Boston City Hospital, an older hospital where I’d trained. When I started work in the summer of 1971, I stepped into one of the patient rooms. It was sweltering. I saw a bedpan on a table by the window with a block of ice in it and a fan blowing behind it. I asked the nurses, ‘What is that?’
" ‘That’s air conditioning,’ they said. I had to laugh at their ingenuity and the humor in doing something so preposterous! Those were some very dedicated nurses. I mean, nothing else would cool the room for the patients, right?
"But I was shocked to find two actual jail cells — real cells with bars and big locks — on another floor. They were for jail inmates who needed to be hospitalized. Once, one of the prisoners went after someone, and a resident tackled him before he could get away. The county Board of Supervisors gave him a big award!
"Another time I was working in the ER when a prisoner with a long chain came after me. An attending physician rushed him. In Boston, when police brought in prisoners, they’d sit with them the entire time.
"In those early days, the hospital was struggling to survive financially. Patients with private insurance were sent to other more modern hospitals. After working there for 38 years, in 2009 we finally got a new hospital and it was great.
"But today, the new UCI Health — Irvine hospital and medical complex is beyond the wildest dreams of my generation. You have a thoroughly modern cancer center, a huge surgical floor with all the latest equipment and a spectacular hospital in a beautiful setting. You can eat your meal on a veranda and look out over the marsh.
"It’s like paradise!
"Now we’re a six-hospital system! That's so incredible. I think we may have more hospitals and more beds than any other medical school in the UC Health system!
"We fought to have this hospital built for over 50 years, and a lot of sweat and anxiety went into that effort. I'm thrilled that it’s now finally here."