As the City and County of San Francisco’s acute care hospital, SFGH is the primary provider of safety-net health care for the most vulnerable – the poor, uninsured working families, immigrants and the elderly. About 80 percent of its patient population either receives publicly funded health insurance (Medicare or Medi-Cal) or is uninsured. The number of uninsured people in San Francisco has climbed to 150,000 – all of whom are welcome at the public hospital. SFGH also cares for the homeless, who make up about 8 percent of its patients.

"There are so many things woven into the fabric of the values of this hospital that I forget it’s not that way everywhere else," says Susan Scheidt, who works in psychosocial medicine.

SFGH is known for its patient-centered care and communication – efforts recently honored by the American Medical Association. It excels in reducing the financial, linguistic, cultural, physical and operational barriers to health care. Among its many patient-friendly features are staff who are trained and tested to interpret 20 different languages, an advocacy office located in the lobby that helps patients navigate the hospital, and an immigrant and refugee clinic that houses the Newcomers Health Program to provide access to health care.

Building trust takes time. On a recent Wednesday morning, community health worker Sylvia Raymundo spent more than 20 minutes talking with a mother and her son about treatment options in the Pediatric Asthma Clinic.

SFGH is open to innovation and ideas that break the mold and set new standards for a public hospital. "If you have the energy and time commitment to do something, people will allow you to do it," says Gene O’Connell, executive administrator at SFGH.

When Bill Schecter, chief of surgery at SFGH, saw the need to provide surgeries for the low-income residents who otherwise would not be able to afford them, he co-founded Operation Access in 1993. The nonprofit organization raises donations to finance surgeries. He and other staff members work weekends alongside students and residents who volunteer for this program. Operation Access is now a Bay Area-wide organization. Similarly, when infectious disease epidemiologist David Bangsberg saw that HIV-positive Ugandans couldn’t afford the drug regimen, he started the Family Treatment Fund to provide them with antiretroviral treatment.