Montage Health forms Helen Baszucki Center for Nursing Excellence with $6.5 million gift

MONTEREY, Calif. (KION) Montage Health announced Thursday that with a $6.5 million contribution from Paul Baszucki in honor of his late wife, it has formed the Helen Baszucki Center for Nursing Excellence.

The goal of the center is to promote nursing excellence through educational opportunities, expansion of nursing training and leadership programs, scholarships for degrees in nursing and a proposal to increase the number of students in the Maurine Church Coburn School of Nursing at Monterey Peninsula College.

“This gift is a tribute to the critical work that nurses do in caring for our community,” says Steven Packer, MD, president/CEO of Montage Health. “Nurses are the primary face of care for so many of our patients, and the Helen Baszucki Center for Nursing Excellence is an investment in current and future generations of these indispensable healthcare professionals.”

Helen Baszucki, the center's namesake, was a nurse and clinical instructor, and her husband Paul said she carried the lessons she learned into other areas of her life.

In mid-2020, Montage Health said the couple gifted $500,000 to the Montage Health Foundation to start the COVID-19 Relief Fund before Helen's death in September 2020.