WHEREAS, San Francisco General Hospital, as one of the nation's leading public hospitals, has continuously provided for over one hundred years a wide range of ambulatory and acute care services to generations of San Francisco residents; and,

WHEREAS, San Francisco General Hospital has received national and international recognition for excellence in services, such as AIDS care, primary care, specialty care, women and children's services, psychiatric services, trauma, clinical research and teaching; and,

WHEREAS, San Francisco General Hospital, through its long-standing affiliation with the University of California at San Francisco, has been the nucleus for medical research in the areas of AIDS/HIV, lung biology, infectious diseases, neurology, and other healthcare concerns vital to the citizens of San Francisco; and,

WHEREAS, the highly regarded medical staff of San Francisco General Hospital provides an essential service through direct clinical care and through related medical research of diseases affecting the residents of San Francisco; and,

WHEREAS, San Francisco General Hospital provides significant services for the Community Health Network, a citywide network of facilities created to provide healthcare services spanning a continuum of care; and,

WHEREAS, many of San Francisco General Hospital's core ambulatory care clinics are housed in out-of-date buildings that are unappealing to consumers and inefficient for providers; and,

WHEREAS, medical research by San Francisco General Hospital providers occurs in similarly deficient buildings; and,

WHEREAS, those same buildings at San Francisco General Hospital have limited resistance to seismic events, which underscores the obsolescence of these structures over the long-term, and which if not addressed, will seriously impede the ability of the Community Health Network to provide medical care and support vital research; and,

WHEREAS, the challenge of keeping the Community Health Network at the forefront of quality medical care in the City requires the creation of a new Ambulatory Care and Research Center on the San Francisco General Hospital Campus; and,

WHEREAS, the Community Health Network has determined that the new facility, consisting of 120,000 square feet in new clinic and research spaces, will enable the migration of clinics from obsolete quarters to a modern facility, and allow a much-needed decompression of existing clinics elsewhere on the Campus; and,

WHEREAS, the development of such a facility will allow the creation of a new basic science research laboratory, whose work will focus on illnesses resurging in frequency in the local patient population; and,

WHEREAS, the Community Health Network is in the fortunate position of having a variety of prior analyses, approvals and programmatic requirements for the proposed project that will enable the Network to move quickly towards the development of the Ambulatory Care and Research Center; and,

WHEREAS, the multiple benefits and opportunities created by the development of the Ambulatory Care and Research Center are crucial for the success of the Community Health Network, now, therefore, be it

RESOLVED, that the San Francisco Health Commission directs the Community Health Network to proceed apace with all investigations, preliminary designs, and cost estimates in support of the development of a new Ambulatory Care and Research Center at San Francisco General Hospital.

I hereby certify that the foregoing resolution was adopted by the Health Commission at its meeting of Tuesday, April 21, 1998.

Sandy Ouye Mori, Executive Secretary to the Health Commission