When Mary and Richard Wallace sought a way to express their gratitude for more than three decades of care from cardiologist and Fogarty Innovation leader Fred St Goar, MD, they chose to create an enduring tribute. This month, El Camino Health announced the inaugural Mary and Richard Wallace Medical Director of the Norma Melchor Heart & Vascular Institute, naming St Goar as its first recipient.
The endowed medical directorship honors a physician whose influence extends well beyond the patients he treats. As leader of the Heart & Vascular Institute for the past decade, St Goar has helped shape a culture grounded in clinical excellence, innovation, community, and personal connection —values that continue to define El Camino Health.
St Goar, who is also a medical device inventor, global health advocate, and mentor to students and startups, has spent all 35 years of his professional career at El Camino Health. “I’ve never had any desire to work anywhere else,” he said. He has led the Heart & Vascular Institute for the past ten years and helped lead Fogarty Innovation since it was founded on the El Camino Health campus in 2007.
The Wallace appointment reflects a longstanding alignment between St Goar’s values and those of El Camino Health. These include:
Quality
Speaking at the small public ceremony announcing the endowment, St Goar called out the “impressively high level of care quality,” that El Camino Health achieves as a community hospital. As just one example, he cited the health system’s adoption of the service line concept, which organizes care around the patient journey rather than traditional departmental silos. El Camino Health has eight service lines, including the Heart & Vascular Institute.
What this means in practice is a coordinated, accountable, and patient-centered approach to cardiovascular care. “We have multiple teams including Heart Failure, Arrythmia Care, Imaging, Cath Lab, and Cardiac Surgery, among others. We have incredibly skilled nurses who aren’t employed by individual physicians; they are employed by the hospital as part of the service line care quality program,” St Goar explained. Because these teams support the entire Heart & Vascular Institute, patients benefit from consistent monitoring and a shared commitment to the highest quality, evidence-based standards of care – regardless of which clinician they see.
For St Goar, quality is ultimately defined by the patient experience. A gifted clinician, in addition to using innovative approaches to treat heart and vascular conditions, his focus is on the whole person. He takes a genuine interest in patients’ lives and long-term health and wellness, asking questions, offering clear explanations, and involving each patient as a knowledgeable partner in their care.
Innovation
Innovation is another defining value shared by St Goar and El Camino Health. “This means never accepting the status quo and always thinking about how we can do better in terms of the patient care experience,” St Goar said.
“Innovation has been part of El Camino Health’s DNA from the beginning,” he observed, citing the health system’s adoption of a modern electronic health record system in 1971 – the first hospital in the U.S. to do so – based on its potential to enhance efficiency and generate data-driven insights. El Camino Health has also been a leader in robotic-assisted surgeries for more than a decade.
According to St Goar, two other “jewels” drive innovation at El Camino Health. One is the Taft Research Program, which oversees clinical research projects and facilitates patient access to cutting-edge technologies. St Goar, who was recruited directly from fellowship to help launch the program, worked on one of its earliest projects: developing and evaluating coronary stents with Advanced Cardiovascular Systems.
The second “jewel,” Fogarty Innovation, is a nonprofit educational medtech incubator that has become “an internationally recognized hub for early-stage medical technology development, with more than 20 companies in-house (out of more than 50 incubated since inception), supported by a senior staff of veteran medtech coaches,” St Goar said.
The close relationship between El Camino Health and Fogarty Innovation benefits both sides: the health system gains early access to emerging technologies and the opportunity to help shape their development, while entrepreneurs gain real-world insights from physicians, nurses, and administrators that strengthen their innovations before they reach patients.
A tireless mentor, adviser, and cheerleader, St Goar has been deeply involved in some of the earliest successful companies to emerge from Fogarty Innovation, including HeartFlow, which redefined coronary artery disease evaluation, and the JADA system for postpartum hemorrhage (Laborie), which continues to save lives around the world.
St Goar is also an established innovator in his own right as the co-founder of Evalve (Abbott Vascular, Inc.), and the physician inventor of MitraClip, a leading therapy to manage mitral regurgitation.
At Fogarty, St Goar advises entrepreneurs, encourages innovative El Camino Health physicians to advance their ideas through Fogarty’s Invention Acceleration Program, and helps lead Fogarty’s Lefteroff Internship program.
Health equity
St Goar recognizes that El Camino Health is “uniquely positioned to provide exceptional care.” This reflects the health system’s location in the heart of Silicon Valley, its dedicated nurses, physicians, administrators and staff, and the broad group of supporters who generate additional resources that nourish the community; from extended nurse education to physician wellness, to community programs like the Heart Forum and Oncology360: Leading Edge Cancer Care.
However, “with privilege comes responsibility,” St Goar said. “This means continuing to push the needle on medical innovation that can help patients both locally and globally.”
Early in his career, St Goar befriended legendary global health advocate Paul Farmer, MD, the founder of Partners in Health. Their friendship sparked St Goar’s lifelong commitment to advancing healthcare in East Africa, where he is an adjunct professor and on the Board of Directors of the University of Global Health Equity (UGHE) in Rwanda, and supports and advises the singular obstetric hospital in Burundi, Village Health Works. Alongside other endeavors. St Goar teaches regularly at UGHE and is working to fund and implement programs that would make it easier for Stanford Medicine faculty to teach residency programs there as well.
He finds each trip inspiring. “When I go to Rwanda and meet with students, share a meal with them in the cafeteria, and hear all about their life and times, I come back so invigorated by these smart, forward-thinking kids who really want to do right for the world,” St Goar said.
Listening
Farmer also modeled something St Goar says transformed his own practice: the art of truly listening. Whether advising entrepreneurs at Fogarty Innovation, teaching in East Africa, leading the Heart & Vascular Institute, or sitting with a patient in clinic, St Goar gives each person his full attention, listening with empathy, humility, and compassion.
“He often comes into the clinic with a medical student, young entrepreneur, or a college student attached to his hip,” said colleague David Singh, MD. “And what strikes me is not just the fact that he takes the time to mentor these people, it’s the authenticity and engagement that he brings. Every interaction I observe seems fresh, every conversation feels important. Every person that he is with seems fully worthy of his attention.”
He continued, “I think all of us who have interacted with Fred have that experience – it doesn’t matter whether that person is at the beginning of their career journey or is the CEO of a major foundation.”
“It’s how he works,” reflected Dan Woods, CEO of El Camino Health. “It’s his focus. It’s one patient at a time. It’s one conversation. When you talk to Fred, you are the only thing that matters to him.”
“Paul was an extraordinary communicator who connected with patients at a level you rarely see,” said St Goar. “When I’m in Rwanda, I try to instill in my students the importance of listening and connecting to their patients. I tell them, ‘Yes, we want to optimize your access to resources, from blood tests to x-ray machines. But in the meantime, as part of your discussions with your patients, it’s so important to focus on the social determinants of – health, nutrition, families, support.’”
He continued, “It’s probably something I didn’t do enough of in my early career. But I’ve learned that listening is every bit as important – and has as much therapeutic value – as any scan or laboratory test.”
Trust
Perhaps the clearest expression of that philosophy is the deep connection St Goar has built with Mary and Richard Wallace over more than three decades. “They’re more like family and friends than patients,” he said. “Developing this kind of relationship is one of the true joys of being a long-term physician in this community.”
While the endowed medical directorship recognizes decades of achievement, perhaps its greatest purpose is to preserve a model of care that Fred St Goar has embodied throughout his career—one grounded not only in clinical excellence and innovation, but in the transformative act of listening. That legacy will continue to shape the Heart & Vascular Institute, and everyone who passes through it, for generations to come.