i want to congratulate all of you for your stewardship of this process, for our celebrity doctor who was in every single ad for being willing to get out front. to the incredible leadership -- and i mean this. this guy was supposed to retire years ago. he is not going to be allowed to, at least as far as i am around -- dr. mitch katz, who deserves so much credit for getting us here. i think the commission behind me for their stewardship, and to all the men and women at work in this remarkable place that change people's lives each and every day. 100,000 direct lives are changed, but every time i come here, i realize you are not just saving patients. you are taking care of families,

mothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, mothers, brothers. i have seen it too many times, the faces of those parents. i cannot even keep a straight face because it is so difficult to see someone in pain, but to see the pride on their face because of the job you have done. i'm just happy we are here to extent that magic, to share our values in a most meaningful and substantive way. i'm glad to kick off this remarkable institution that combines the best of san francisco. congratulations to all of us for being here today. thank you, mr. mayor. -- >> thank you, mr. mayor. when i needed for this project to go forward to the voters, i needed first the help of the san francisco family. the vote, 11-0 in favor.

that shows a tremendous commitment. several of the members of the board are here, and i think it is not coincidental that they also represent the parts of the city that we care for, the highest number. supervisor maxwell, supervisor daly, supervisor dufty, supervisor campos, thank you so much for being here. thank you for supporting us. we really appreciate it. the city treasurer is year, helping us in making sure our bank accounts have enough money to deliver that excellent care. we really appreciate it. we are so blessed that we got a direct letter some mrs. pelosi -- from mrs. pelosi.

she definitely has other things do intend to, and yet she found time to reach out to all of us to tell us about her deep commitment to general hospital. she herself would be here. we got a beautiful certificate of recognition from the majority whip. also, from assemblyman mark leff. thank you so much for all of that. we really appreciated. you can imagine that all of the many challenges that i faced when i had to accept the idea that jean really was going to retire was how would i ever get anybody who could do as good a job running this hospital? fortunately, jean, like all very good administrators, had already worked out a succession plan. she nurtured and mentor and

counseled and supported soup kern, who has then been able to be a ceo and continued to move the organization forward, so it gives me great pleasure to introduce to you soon current -- sue curren. [applause] >> thank you, dr. katz and mayor newsom, and thank you all of you for helping us come out to celebrate this momentous occasion. we were founded to respond to the public health crisis of tuberculosis that was going on at the time, and we are still here. we have been here for aids, and we will be here for the swine flu, and we will be here forever next crisis that comes along. we are really grateful to the city and residents who supported the hospital and recognized its

value to the community. you showed us that by passing proposition a ways and that 84% record. we are really committed to living up to the state that you have put in all of us. san francisco general hospital has touched many lives, and we heard that throughout the campaign as we went around and talked to people. we have heard many stories about how they were connected or have someone that they knew that they cared about was connected to the hospital. i am one of those people. my first encounter with san francisco general was as a trauma patient. i was brought after i was injured during a mugging in the city, and i came back as a staff nurse, and then came back as a registered nurse working in critical care, and now, i and the ceo. i am so glad to be here.

[applause] i have seen general from all sides, and let me tell you, there is no better team on earth. the entire staff san francisco general, the doctors, nurses, administrators, officials, social workers, pharmacists, housekeepers, is workers, everyone -- there is just so many of you. i cannot say the mall. i want you to stand up, and we should applaud you for all the great work you do. [applause] stand up, please. they really do an amazing job. and we are all so excited because in this new building, we are even going to be able to do a better job. remember, we are not just here simply to celebrate a new building. we are really celebrating the health-care services that we are

going to be able to provide to all san franciscans. as the only trauma center in the city, we will continue to bring life-saving trauma and emergency care. we will also deliver the best geriatric care and award winning maternal child care and so much more. the new building is going to be filled with original art for the entire community to enjoy. we are really trying to create an asset to the neighborhood and be a center for well this and -- wellness and be a healing environment for the patients, staff, and visitors. as we celebrate the beginning of construction, i am really proud to tell you that the building design has been honored with a design award of excellence by the california council of the society of american registered architects, and there is a model in the hospital lobby that i invite you all to come and take a look at that will show you

what our new hospital is going to be. thank you all for coming and helping us to celebrate as we embark on this journey together. thank you. [applause] >> we have a saying about staff at general hospital, that sue and jean have exemplified, and it is stay six months, stay 30 years. i'm beginning to think that may be true for me as well. there's a certain sense that our mission is not for everyone. this is not the easiest hospital to work in. this is not the easiest work to do. but if you are confident with our mission that we are going to treat everybody with dignity, we are going to offer the highest quality of care to people regardless of their ability to pay -- is that mission reverberates with me, you stay

-- if that mission rigorous with you, you stay 30 years because there is no better place to do that mission. another way that i think that we are different -- and i say this as a doctor -- is that we are not a doctor-centric hospital. there is any reason that both the current ceo and prior ceo are registered nurses. there is a reason why -- i noticed the on john's in the audience, that there is a reason why we have always pushed the idea that it is not a doctor. it is a doctor with a nurse with a social worker with a pharmacist with an id person, with a cook that it is the team that delivers the care.

everybody who delivers the care, thank you. that is who is special. also very special is our more than 100-year arrangement with ucsf. certainly, this was a tremendously important to me. when i was looking for where did i want to do my training, where did i want to practice? i wanted to take care of going to people, and i also wanted to make sure that i was the best trained doctor that i could be, and the attraction of this hospital because it was a ucsf teaching hospital, and it has produced great leaders, i would like to note dr. sandra hernandez, who is in the front, who was my predecessor. she was also in the special way, that many of us who trained here are related to one another, whether or not we were physicians or nurses or other professionals.

sandra and i trained a year apart. dr. desmond, who is now the chancellor -- she was a fellow while i was a resident, so there are all of these intense relationships that result in the very best of medical care, and there is nobody who exemplifies that better than dr. su carlisle, who is a ucsf physician, but whose heart is at san francisco general hospital, and she is the one who makes all of our faculty practices and all of the clinical work come true. dr carlyle. >> thank you. good afternoon. i would like to add my welcome to all of you for this wonderful event that we have worked so long and hard to accomplish. as was just mentioned, ucsf and the city and county of san

francisco have had a wonderful partnership for many years. this partnership gets stronger every year, and we now have more than 5000 and police that works for ucsf on this campus. we work side-by-side with city employees in order to deliver seamless care for all of the residents. exemplified by the strength of this partnership is the wonderful leadership that we have at the top, and we have already mentioned our new chancellor. we also have a new dean who is here with us today. we are very appreciative for the support that we have for our leadership. ucsf employees here include not only all the doctors, but all of the respiratory paris, clinical lab workers, biomedical engineers, administrative staff, and a large number of

researchers. the care of any patient requires not only cooperation between the city and university, but the cooperation across all of our specialties in order to deliver the quality care that we do. many of our personnel here are involved in cutting edge research. we believe strongly that this research has a great impact on the care that we are able to deliver. the subjects of our research include trauma care, violence prevention, better communication with patients, improved diagnostic techniques, just to name a few, and i would be remiss not to mention that we are the world-renowned center of hiv research and care. in addition to the superlative care and clinical research, we also play a critical row -- critical role in training the future health care providers for the next generations to come.

these new facilities will enhance our ability to do that. we attract the best and most dedicated teachers and lerner's because of our wonderful heart and soul that we provide here at san francisco general. in the future, we will continue to fulfill our mission to provide health care and, services to all. we are excited to be a partner in this wonderful endeavor. thank you. [applause] >> nothing that i do, nothing that the health department does would be possible without the fantastic san francisco health commission. i would ask them to stand up. president ilig. thank you so much. thank you for the support. thank you for the leadership.

thank you for making things like this rebuild happen. many of them worked hard on the campaign trail helping us to make it happen. i want to thank also the broader city family, our fire chief is here. our special angel in the mayor's office, who has now moved on to another job and shepherded the project all the way through, and a very special thank you and welcome up to the podium for a missing, the head of dpw who made sure that the project is on time and on budget and it will be a great facility. [applause] >> thank you, mitch, and thanks, everyone, for coming out today. this is a great day for the department of public works. we are responsible for managing

the design and construction of this facility, and we are honored to be serving in that role. we are also very lucky. due to the foresight of the mayor and the board of supervisors and the pre- development work that the mayor referenced, although we are just breaking ground today. we are actually well on our way towards delivering this project, and part of that has been assembling a great team of designers and builders to make this hospital in reality. i want to acknowledge everyone here with us and the great work they have done. [applause] we have and the ball and the team for web core builders, who are going to be building a hospital for us. [applause] and we have a team of folks from jacobs engineering, who are providing the construction management. what we have for bringing this

team together is not just a modern design and modern construction methods, but we have most modern means of delivering a complex project like this where we have all these folks working together and the pre-development funding enabled us to bring them together, and what that allows us to do is it allows the people who are going to be building the building to sit down with the people who are designing the building to test concepts such as prototyping. the base isolation is going to make sure that this hospital is seismically safe. it allows us to make sure that the way that we are designing this is a way that we can also build that in a most efficient and effective way. it allows us to get ahead in terms of bidding for certain parts of the project. we just were able to bid the steel package, for example, pitting what we believe might have been the very bottom of the steel market, which is going to

save us about $5 million from what we felt we were going to have to pay. again, i just want to reinforce the foresight that the mayor and the board had in providing this pro development funding to enable us to work collaborative lee and ultimately to get an accurate price, to save money for the city and enable us to deliver this project. what we bring is the project management, and to do that, we looked across the bay, and there was a guy who was finishing up getting the highland hospital built over in alameda county, and we recruited him here, so our lead project manager is ron allen need a. i want to acknowledge 10. -- ron alameda. he is leading a great team devoted public servants in the department of public works. they are supported by edgar lopez, our head of project management, and our city

engineer and deputy manager. it is with them and me that we are committed to doing as mitch said, which is bringing this project, delivering it to you on time and on budget as we promised when we got the support of the voters back last november. i also just want to mention that we are not only just building a hospital, but we are building a hospital that will meet the seismic requirements, very stringent seismic requirements that state law requires, and that san franciscans desert to make sure that we will be safe in the event of the earthquake that we know is going to come. we are delivering this building to be a lead certified building, which means that over the life of the building, it will perform better, use less energy and water and other resources -- much less than the current hospital currently does, saving san franciscans money year after year down the road, and that in

building this project, we are making every effort to make sure that that $887.4 million not only gets a great hospital built but along the way provides opportunities both for san francisco residents and for san francisco businesses. this is our local stimulus project, right here, nearly a billion-dollar project happening during this economy. could not have happened at a better time, and we are committed to making sure that san francisco businesses and residents benefit from this. so we are very pleased to be here. thank you to the voters for giving us your vote of confidence last year, and congratulations to the board of health and city of san francisco for the great facility that is going to come. thank you. >> one of the challenges that you all will recognize is that you are standing on where the new hospital will be, but during

the next five years, we cannot forget about the hospital there because that is where our patients are going to be. on that note, i want to thank and recognize kathy young, who has the responsibility of keeping all the other facilities going. are around here in the public sector, she does that with a lot of that tape. we have mops used to move certain engineering equipment. i know all of the secrets from having been here. i want to also recognize we have a great chief of nursing who is here. the administrative team -- i saw you here somewhere. our chief making sure that it all works well. we are very grateful to you. i also want to note dr. thomas kean, who is now head of medicine at ucsf.

our former head of medicine here -- he watches over us and make sure that the university is fully supportive of our efforts. we are very grateful. our chief medical officer. i also cannot miss the chance to say this, dr. elliott rappaport, the former dean, who also taught me everything i know about cardiology, which unfortunately, elliot, really is not that much. but we really appreciate the number of years. dr. rapoport is one of those people who stayed six months and may now be up to 35 years. how many years? 49 years. that is the typical san francisco employees. i also want to say we are big believers in the health department, that people need hospitals. hospitals are critical, but hospitals are not where we want people. where we want people is in the

community. we want to keep people healthy. we want people seeing their primary-care doctors, whether here or in the community or at the federally qualified health centers, and for the incredibly rich array of community-based services that either keep people out of the hospital or give them a warm place to go. it is now my honor to introduce to you judy guggenheim, the president of the san francisco general hospital foundation. without them, we would never be in this position of being able to be talking about a new hospital. they have been our friends, our supporters. they have helped us to raise money, help us raise support, and no one has been a more enthusiastic spokesperson for this hospital then to the guggenheim -- judy guggenheim.

[applause] >> thank you, mitch. every time i stand out and talk about san francisco general, i feel humble and proud. i feel humble because what goes on is in a public arena, the most remarkable consensus of all kinds of groups all across the city working to make this hospital something that not only can we be proud of, but that is recognized all around the country as the very best of the best. our programs go nationwide. our research goes nationwide. every time i bring somebody here who has never been to the hospital before, they all go away just filled with energy and enthusiasm, thinking that this is the best place they have ever

seen. that is why i feel humble. it is also why i feel proud. it is a remarkable thing to be able to stand up and say what goes on here because of the work of every single person involved here, and now, because of the work of 84.5% of the people in the city, is just unheard of. i know we are going to have a fabulous new hospital. i know webcor is going to do a wonderful job. i think the mayor's office has just done a remarkable -- remarkable job and 8th board of supervisors and the unions and the republican party and democratic party and the business community. most of all, i think all of you and all the voters in this city have something to be really proud of. thank you.

[applause] >> in closing, terry is the one from our side taking the lead on making sure that the hospital fits in terms of the new building and our facilities. we are going to walk down now to where you see the shovels. we hope you will stay and watch the mayor as well as the health commission and other elected officials. take that first shovel of dirt that brings to the new hospital. thank you. i will start at 5 -- mayor newsom: i will start at 5

4 3 2 1 [applause] congratulations. well done.

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