San Francisco General Hospital - San Francisco General Hospital

Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center (SFGH) is a safety net hospital in San Francisco, California, and the only Level I Trauma Center for the 1.5 million residents of San Francisco and northern San Mateo County. The hospital serves poor, elderly people, uninsured working families, and immigrants. About 80 percent of its patient population either receives publicly funded health insurance (Medicare or Medi-Cal) or is uninsured. SFGH also cares for the homeless, who make up about 8 percent of its patients. It is the largest acute inpatient and rehabilitation hospital for psychiatric patients in the City. Additionally, it is the only acute hospital in San Francisco that provides twenty-four-hour psychiatric emergency services in San Francisco.

In addition to the approximately 3,500 San Francisco municipal employees, the University of California at San Francisco provides approximately 1,500 employees (including Physicians, nurses and ancillary personnel). The hospital, especially its Ward 86, was instrumental in treating and identifying early cases of AIDS. The original brick main building was replaced with a concrete one with construction started in 1971; four remaining 1915 five-story edifices are among the tallest brick buildings in the city. The hospital is located at 1001 Potrero Avenue between the Mission District and Potrero Hill; U.S. Route 101 rounds its east side at “Hospital Curve”.

A new San Francisco General Hospital acute care building is currently under construction on the site and is planned to be opened in May 2016. It will be the only hospital in San Francisco built with a base-isolated foundation, the latest technology for protecting buildings during seismic activity. Notable improvements include expanding the capacity of emergency department and increasing the number of beds as well as increasing the number of intensive care unit (ICU) beds and combining the previously separate surgical and medical units into one ICU.

Timeline 

• 1850: San Francisco Granted a city Charter and creates a Board of Health; cholera strikes, temporary hospital set up.
• 1857: City and County opens its first permanent hospital in the former North Beach schoolhouse at Stockton and Francisco streets.
• 1864: “In the fall of 1864, Dr. Hugh Toland opened his new medical school, which in 1872 would become the University of California. The Medical School building was located on Stockton Street near Chestnut adjacent to the City and County Hospital ... In 1865, Toland was granted permission to use the hospital for clinical instruction.” 
• 1872: “On August 28, 1872, the New City-County Hospital on Potrero Street was opened ... it was described as a two-story, wooden frame building with a brick foundation...” 
• 1873: Agreement allows City and County Hospital to serve as UC and Stanford medical schools’ clinical facility.
• 1906: “The Earthquake and Great Fire devastate the City in April 18, 1906 ... the Hospital with its wood frame structure anchored on the firm rock of Potrero Hill survived more or less intact, with minimal injury to inmates or staff.” 
• 1907: Long needed children’s ward and contagious pavilion open.
• 1908: Second plague epidemic strikes; hospital pronounced unfit for patient care when plague infested rats and fleas are found there; wooden buildings burned to the ground by city order and patients moved to the old Jockey Club Racetrack in the Ingleside district, where box stalls and grandstands are converted into a temporary hospital; “Mission Emergency” Hospital, one of the city owned network, operates out of a shack on the Potrero Ave site.
• 1915: New San Francisco General Hospital, landscaped, red brick, Italian Renaissance style complex, dedicated during the City's celebration of the completion of the Panama Canal; motorized ambulances replace the horse-drawn vans.
• 1924: Psychiatric ward opens to treat acutely ill patients and reduce state hospital admissions.
• 1959: “In May 1959 in the first contract with the University of California was signed and amounted to 1% of the total hospital budget or $154,000 ... the value of teaching programs to a public hospital was emphasized by the university in their negotiations with the city...” 
• 1963: “...a modern medical library funded primarily by UC was opened on Ward 31. It was named the Briggs-Barnett library after two former chiefs of medicine on the UC and Stanford service.” 
• 1965: “The pressing need for more psychiatric beds, the general overcrowding, and the problems of maintenance and staffing all combined to emphasize the inadequacy of the 50-year-old hospital ... a $33.7 million bond issue ... passed overwhelmingly with the highest support of any bond since the earthquake of 1906.” 
• 1971: Groundbreaking for the new hospital.
• 1972: Trauma Center opens at Mission Emergency, with a grant from NIH.
• 1973: Outpatient department, Stroke Research Center, coronary and respiratory ICUs, Family Practice residency starts.
• 1976: New SFGH Medical Center opens after three years of planning by community advisory boards.
• 1979: Specially equipped Burn Unit, San Francisco's second, becomes part of the Trauma Center; Gladstone Foundation Cardiovascular Laboratories open.
• 1980: Ernest Gallo Clinic and Research Center established to study basic neuroscience and the effects of alcohol on the brain.
• 1983: UCSF clinicians and researchers develop the country's first outpatient AIDS clinic and inpatient ward at SFGH and mount an enormous multidisciplinary effort to fight off the disease.
• 1991: Trauma Center designated the only Level I Trauma Center in San Francisco providing around the clock medical and psychiatric emergency services.
• 1993 SFGH continues to be recognized as the premier hospital for AIDS care in the United States. The Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology opens at SFGH, second largest basic research institute in the US. In partnership with UCSF, conducts research on new drugs and treatment for HIV/AIDS, along with clinical trials, prevention, outreach, and professional education programs.
• 2004: Avon Foundation Comprehensive Breast Center open to provide state-of-the-art imaging for breast cancer detection, more than doubling screening capacity and expanding outreach at SFGH.
• 2008: San Francisco passes an $888 million bond to build a new hospital at SFGH between the historic 1915 red brick buildings. The bond received 84% approval.
• 2015: Facebook founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan give $75 million to help fund equipment and technology for the new hospital.
• 2016: The new hospital building is completed.

Notable deaths

• Diane Whipple

Artwork

The hospital owns and displays two paintings by Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, donated to the hospital by Dr. Leo Eloesser. Eloesser interned at SFGH and was Kahlo's physician.