Named for President Dwight D. Eisenhower, the hospital credits its initial creation to two events in 1966 when entertainer Bob Hope was asked to lend his name to a charity golf tournament and to serve on the board of the hospital that would be built from the tournament's proceeds. The original of land were donated by Bob and Dolores Hope and both helped raise private funds for the hospital's construction. Construction began in 1969; the groundbreaking ceremony was attended by President Richard Nixon, Vice PresidentSpiro Agnew, Governor Ronald Reagan, and entertainers Bob Hope, Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Gene Autry, and Lucille Ball. The main Eisenhower hospital, designed by Edward Durrell Stone, opened in November 1971, containing 289 beds. Among the early trustees were actress Martha Hyer and Roy W Hill. , Bob Hope, Anne T. Hill, Geraldine Dreier, Roy W. Hill at a fund raiser for Eisenhower Medical Center. 1975 The three original medical buildings were named for local philanthropists Mr. and Mrs. Walter Probst, Mr. and Mrs. Peter Kiewit and Mrs. Hazel Wright. Philanthropists Walter and Leonore Annenberg donated funds to establish the Annenberg Center for Health Sciences. A $212.5 million, four story, state-of-the-art addition to the hospital, the Walter and Leonore Annenberg Pavilion, opened for patient care in November 2010. Lee Annenberg donated over $100 million to Campaign Eisenhower, Phase II. Other institutions on the campus include the Barbara Sinatra Children's Center and the Dolores Hope Outpatient Care Center. Dolores Hope served in the capacities of President, Chairman of the Board and Chairman Emeritus since 1968 and participated in every major decision regarding the hospital until her death in 2011. By 1990, the hospital's 3000th open heart surgical procedure was performed. The facility's Walter and Leonore Annenberg Pavilion, an inpatient pavilion connected to the north end of the existing hospital, opened in late 2010. Ground-breaking for the project was held three years earlier, in 2007. The $215 million project was the twelfth-largest construction project undertaken in the State of California. Eisenhower Medical Center has outpatient departments that range from primary care offices, laboratories, and urgent care centers: in Palm Springs, Rancho Mirage, and La Quinta. In recent years it has also started residency programs to train future physicians. Thus far, it has residencies in Family Medicine, Internal Medicine, and Emergency Medicine. In 2019 it also started its first Pulmonary Fellowship program.
Notable patients
Comedian Red Skelton died of an "undisclosed illness" at the facility on September 17, 1997 at the age of 84. In January 2006President Gerald Ford was admitted to EMC for sixteen days for treatment of pneumonia. Upon Ford's death on December 26, 2006 his body was taken to Eisenhower Medical Center. His body remained there until the start of funeral services on December 29. Former United States Chief of Protocol and philanthropist Leonore Annenberg died at Eisenhower on March 12, 2009. Reputed Los Angeles mobster, Jimmy Caci, died on August 16, 2011.
Hospital rating data
The HealthGrades website contains the latest quality data for Eisenhower Medical Center, as of 2015. For this rating section three different types of data from HealthGrades are presented: quality ratings for thirty-two inpatient conditions and procedures, thirteen patient safety indicators, percentage of patients giving the hospital a 9 or 10. For inpatient conditions and procedures, there are three possible ratings: worse than expected, as expected, better than expected. For Eisenhower Medical Center the data for this category is:
Worse than expected - 3
As expected - 25
Better than expected - 4
For patient safety indicators, there are the same three possible ratings. For this hospital four indicators were rated as:
Worse than expected - 1
As expected -9
Better than expected - 3
Data for patients giving this hospital a 9 or 10 are:
Patients rating this hospital as a 9 or 10 - 74%
Patients rating hospitals as a 9 or 10 nationally - 69%
