Voters Approve Prop A to Rebuild SF General

By Arul Thangavel
Editor

Proposition A, the measure to fund San Francisco General Hospital with the nearly one billion dollars it needs to become earthquake safe, passed easily on the November 4th election. A bond proposition on the city ballot requires a 2/3 majority rather than the traditional simple majority to pass; prop A garnered over 80% of the vote.

Without these funds, SF General, the only Level I round-the-clock trauma center in the city, would be forced to close its doors by 2013 due to lack of earthquake retrofitting. The Northridge earthquake of 1994 jostled state lawmakers into drafting a new law that required hospitals to be earthquake-safe or in the process of retrofitting within twenty years. This specific measure, long awaited as the plan for helping the General meet these state standards, was heavily supported by Gavin Newsom and San Francisco General Hospital staff, who insisted that the price tag was accurate and the hospital plays a vital role in San Franciscan health.

The issue of meeting hospital seismic safety measures is not a new one for San Francisco – just last year retrofitting the Laguna Honda Hospital and Rehabilitation Center cost the city over $1.5 billion, far more than the $300 million San Francisco had allotted for the necessary construction.
To avoid the pitfalls of the Laguna Honda disaster, which left the hospital in the dire position of cutting future services to pay for construction already in progress, the CEO of San Francisco General, working with the City Council and the mayor, spent $25 million drafting a plan to make sure money was spent accurately and appropriately for the proposed SF General rebuild.

After carefully considering environmental and design factors, the commission proposed a plan that would, according to Gavin Newsom, cost “exactly“ $887.4 million to build a brand new nine-story hospital amidst the older brick buildings on the San Francisco General Hospital campus. While some critics believed the plan flawed, adding too few beds for too much money, most believed the plan well-crafted.

Building a new facility while keeping the old one open allows the General to continue operating during construction, critical for the hospital of last resort for many of the city’s impoverished patients. The facility is also a cornerstone in Gavin Newsom’s “Healthy San Francisco” plan, the city-wide universal health insurance plan, is a part of a newly started UCSF Emergency Medicine Residency Program, and serves over 1.5 million residents of San Francisco and San Mateo counties. The newly revamped hospital would open by 2015.