Today a 436-bed acute care teaching hospital, the largest of its kind between
Los Angeles and the
San Francisco Bay Area, the hospital was founded in 1888 by 50 women determined to provide a healthcare facility for the growing community of Santa Barbara. Now with annual admissions of 18,000 patients, 27,000 emergency department visits, and 2,100 births, the hospital is renowned for its comprehensive maternal-child and pediatric services, cardiac, neurosurgical, and oncology programs, emergency and trauma services, modern operating rooms, sophisticated diagnostic radiology equipment, outpatient surgery, eye center, and psychiatric and chemical dependency services.
Its medical staff of more than 500 includes specialists in all major clinical areas, many of whom are involved in the training and education of new physicians in the hospital's internal medicine, general surgery and radiology residency programs.
