Augustin Yañez was governor of Jalisco when construction of the hospital began in 1956, on land that belonged to the Universidad de Guadalajara (UdG), just off the Calzada Independencia. At the end of his administration, 12 floors had been built but the edifice was far from complete.
The subsequent governor, Juan Gil Preciado, tried to sell the half-finished building to the Instituto Mexicano de Seguro Social (IMSS) to serve as its new Centro Medico but met with fierce opposition from the UdG, which was adamant that it should be used as a teaching hospital for its medical students.
With no agreement on either side, the structure became the city’s landmark white elephant until the 1980s, when governor Enrique Alvarez del Castillo decided that the medical needs of his state were so pressing that the building must house a hospital once and for all.
The new hospital opened on February 1, 1988 with 45 beds and five essential areas: pediatrics, gynecology, internal medicine and surgery, emergencies and x-rays. The first patient was a pregnant women who passed through the doors at 8 a.m. and gave birth three hours later.
Known at first as the Nuevo Hospital Civil (it was later renamed Juan I. Menchaca), the facility catered to all Mexicans without IMSS os ISSSTE health insurance, particularly the self-employed, unemployed and less well off.
In this sense the hospital became a sibling of the Old Hospital Civil on Calle Belen, founded in 1794 by Friar Antonio Alcalde, the city’s most well-known benefactor. The two hospitals merged under the same UdG/Secretaria de Salud umbrella administration in 1997.
Considered one of Mexico’s best hospitals for the care of high-risk pregnancies and premature births, the Nuevo Hospital Civil also boasts first-rate units specializing in children with cancer, burns and chronic renal insufficiency, as well as for youngsters requiring bone marrow transplants. The hospital also carries out obesity and pacemaker surgery.
The Nuevo Hospital Civil handles almost 250,000 outpatient consultations each year, treats 35,000 inpatients and carries out 13,000 surgeries. Some 6,500 babies are born in the hospital each year, more than half of them by C-section. Of the 2,696 employees, 448 are doctors, 1,586 nurses, 420 administrative staff and 242 service personnel.