Thoughtful and unassuming, C. Spencer Yost, MD, has provided superb leadership of Anesthesia clinical services since the adult hospitals opened at Mission Bay in 2015, and prior to that, since his 2005 appointment as Director of the Mount Zion ICU. Dr. Yost will retire at the end of June, 2020.
Essential to the planning and smooth transition of clinical services to Mission Bay, the Vice Chair for Clinical Planning and Strategy had already been working with colleagues for years to improve the perioperative experience of UCSF patients at our Moffitt and Mount Zion locations, saying at the time, “…along with the kinder, gentler, more human scale of the new facility, we want to make sure we have a culture transplant that reflects and creates a more patient-centric experience.” These words exemplify Dr. Yost’s notable career of excellence in patient care, serving in the OR, on the acute pain service, and in the ICU.
Dr. Yost graduated from the UCSF School of Medicine in 1983, and went on to complete his anesthesiology residency at Harbor UCLA, followed by a critical care medicine fellowship at Presbyterian Hospital through the University of Pittsburgh, graduating in 1987. While Director of the ICU at Mount Zion, Dr. Yost was instrumental in the expansion of services in the hospital after the Stanford de-merger, and in the beta testing of the then-new electronic medical record system, PICIS. Both experiences would serve Dr. Yost and the department well as UCSF transitioned to Mission Bay and to its current EMR, APeX. Since then, the department has depended upon Dr. Yost’s calm and effective stewardship of adult clinical services at Mission Bay.
Please join us in thanking him for his incredible leadership and service to the department, university, and our patients, and wishing him well in his next endeavors.