San Francisco General Hospital is a general acute care hospital which is owned and operated by the City and County of San Francisco.
To deliver humanistic, cost-effective, and culturally competent health services to the residents of the City and County of San Francisco through:
1. A commitment to access for all residents by eliminating financial, linguistic, physical and operational barriers.
2. The provision of quality services that treat illness, promote and sustain wellness, and the prevention of the spread of disease, injury and disability.
3. The participation of quality services that treat illness, promote and sustain wellness, and the prevention of the spread of disease, injury and disability.
4. The participation and support of training and research.
5. The commitment to community involvement in meeting healthcare needs.
Many Trauma I hospital centers in the US do not have helipads on site. For example the New York City, Bellvue, Columbia and Cornell University Medical Centers are all Trauma I centers and their trauma patients arrive at one of 3 public helipads and are then transferred to a ground ambulance for transport to the hospital. There is a similar system in Washington DC, where neither of the Trauma I Centers at Howard University or George Washington Hospital have helipads on site.
The main difference between a Trauma I and a Trauma II Center is that Trauma I facilities are part of accredited medical training programs (e.g. UCSF) so individuals injured in surrounding Bay Area counties do not necessarily receive lesser care when flown to the Trauma II Centers in the adjacent counties. Trauma II Centers must offer the same range of medical services as a Trauma I Center.
There are currently sufficient area hospitals with Trauma I and II centers and helipads within very short flight times.
Because of the geography of the Bay Area no acute accident/trauma victim in the Bay Area is far away from a Trauma Center. There are 12 Trauma Centers in Bay area counties including Eden Hospital, Childrens', Highland, John Muir, Queen of the Valley in Napa, Santa Rosa MC, Marin General Hospital, UC-Davis, SFGH, Santa Clara Valley Medical Center, Stanford, and Regional Medical Center of San Jose.
Children who need trauma care can be cared for at SFGH which is also a "verified" Pediatric Trauma I Center (G M O'Connell, 12/06). Mission Bay Children's Hospital will also provide "urgent/emergency care" for children when it is completed.
There will be no helicopters based at SFGH. Most of the local medical helicopters are based in Concord, CA.
No one suffering a trauma/accident in the city of SF will be transported to SFGH by helicopter. By the time a helicopter is summoned from Concord, where they are based, the victim could be taken by ground ambulance to SFGH.
In San Francisco when Code 3 calls (presumed life threatening calls) come to 911, an ambulance or fire paramedic arrives within 4.5 minutes 85% of the time. Advanced life support ambulances arrive within 7 minutes 95% of the time.
The SF Emergency Services Plan does not specify that there should be a helipad at SFGH to help in the case of widespread disaster. The DPH has 29 designated medical helicopter landing areas spread across the city for use in case of an emergency. This diversification is crucial since no one knows where a disaster will strike. The SF General Plan, however, actually states that it is the Police Department that is "required" to have and to maintain "one heliport landing" site for "emergency operations".