Elevating Technology - Excellent Care
A Personal Connection to the Excellence Campaign
Kevin Wilkinson knows hospitals. He has served on the Arroyo Grande Community Hospital Foundation Board for four years and has visited hospitals as a patient and loved one. But that knowledge became even more intimate when he was diagnosed with a rare brain tumor in 2019.
“Anybody that’s been involved in some major diagnosis knows that, at that point, your world turns upside down,” said Kevin, who also serves as the Foundation’s secretary. “My tumor was a little bit smaller than a baseball which, funny enough, at UCSF they weren’t really worried about the size. They didn’t think it was a big one, but I did.”
He traveled up to University of California San Francisco Medical Center (UCSF) to have it removed by a neurosurgeon. The surgery went well — or so everyone thought, until Kevin noticed some uncomfortable swelling at the extraction site. He immediately checked into Arroyo Grande Community Hospital.
“That’s where I met Dr. Snider, and I just felt extremely comfortable from the beginning,” Kevin recalled. “After spending a lot of time up at UCSF, it felt like a direct extension of that quality of care.”
Arroyo Grande Community Hospital Emergency Medicine physician Dr. Margaux Snider worked successfully with UCSF to diagnose and treat Kevin’s life-threatening infection.
“The doctors up at UCSF were very complimentary of Dr. Snider and the other physicians we have here at AG Hospital. Academic centers such as UCSF or schooling doctors are often put up on a pedestal, but to hear them talk about our local doctors and how well they handled my situation—it was another feather in the caps of our local doctors.”
While Kevin received excellent emergency care, he had to travel out of the area for the imaging needed to diagnose his tumor. That experience inspired him to serve as chair of the hospital’s Excellence Campaign, a five-year fundraising campaign to bring more advanced imaging technology and private patient rooms to Arroyo Grande Community Hospital.
“We’ve made sure our doctors and staff are at the level that they’re being recognized nationally,” Kevin said. “Through the Excellence Campaign, we can elevate the care we provide to families facing cancer by strengthening our imaging equipment and adding private patient rooms.”
Dr. Stephen Holtzman, Medical Director of Radiology Services, agrees that the Excellence Campaign will make a lasting impact on our hospital and our community.
“All of these cutting-edge treatments really require top-of-the-line equipment. We have such great, caring physicians who are capable of doing just about everything,” Hotlzman said. “We just need to make sure that we keep up with the incredible evolution of technology that’s out there.”
Join Kevin and Dr. Holtzman in enhancing excellence for our community. Click here to donate to the Excellence Campaign.