Steven Packer, MD
President/CEO, Montage Health
In many ways, our sense of time has been completely disrupted the past 18 months.
Sometimes, it seemed to stand still. Other times, it moved at a dizzying pace. Inevitably, it’s
been hard to keep up and to keep track as the hours and days and weeks and months and,
even years, went by.
There have been so many challenges — the COVID-19 pandemic, wildfires decimating
the Central Coast, a worldwide push for social justice, and a growing concern over
climate change. At the same time, there have been breakthroughs and new beginnings.
The lifesaving COVID-19 vaccine arrived in late 2020 after its successful development at
an unparalleled speed. Our country elected a new president. And Montage Health not
only provided compassionate care and caring for our patients and their loved ones directly
affected by COVID-19, we continued to move forward with initiatives that matter most
to our community — in 2020 and beyond.
We opened three new MoGo Urgent Care clinics in Monterey, Marina, and Carmel. The Carol
Hatton Breast Care Center moved to its new 10,500 square-foot location in Ryan Ranch.
We introduced and refined telemedicine when the pandemic made it difficult to safely see
some of our patients in-person. We held a socially distanced groundbreaking for the building
that will house Ohana, our innovative child and adolescent mental health program made
possible by a nearly $106-million donation from Bertie Bialek Elliott.
It’s a bit surreal to now be putting all this together in what we typically call our annual report.
It didn’t make sense in this version to confine ourselves to a literal interpretation of a oneyear
timeline, so we will be presenting a look at Montage Health from January 2020 until
mid-2021. That gives us an opportunity to take you through the pandemic, through Montage
Health’s steadfast commitment to continuing to invest in our community, and through the
tremendous opportunity we had to vaccinate more than 59,000 people in the fight against
COVID-19. Something for which we will be forever grateful.
Suffice it to say that never have I been more proud of our entire staff for how we persevered,
cared, collaborated, always put our patients first, and never, ever lost hope.
This report is a tribute to them.