hospital buildings constructed after 1973 performed well but those built earlier did not. about 1,000 patients were evacuated from damaged hospitals. it took years and years to replace those damaged facilities. as it stands, patience in san francisco hospitals could die and san franciscans would remain untreated because the hospitals cannot function and some of those will die. it will take years and years to replace. the city needs new hospital buildings for post earthquake capacity. we need these building as soon as possible. tonight you have the ability to expedite solutions to this looming tragedy. new facilities are needed as soon as possible. the project that i managed estimates between 400 and 3,500

san franciscans will need medical care in hospitals following a major earthquake striking this city. we are living on borrowed time. thank you. >> the next speakers, thomas simpson, sue hester and eric brooks. >> hi, there. i represent -- and i'm here to speak on behalf of eric hester who just had to leave because his kids are crying at home. they are calling for daddy. i work at cpmc hospital as a hospital attendant. i'm a member and i'm here to support the project because it would provide better care access to community. at the current surgical facility, we are limited in our abilities to provide quality surgical procedures because the operating room is outdated. we constantly use newer and more high-tech equipment that require

extra power. some of our eye surgeries require special outlets for lasers we use during procedure. out of 10 operating rooms, we currently use only two. that can provide the necessary power for the lasers. this limits the number of procedures and prevents us from providing the best health care for our patients. the new facility would be state of the art so we could provide the best care possible. i hope the planning commission will afford this new project. >> my name is noa ong. i'm speaking in favor to have project. my 91-year-old mother jenny was a patient at cal pacific medical center. if the ambulance was 10 minutes later she would have been dead. she has a language disability and they could not understand what the problem was but the doctors are smart and figured it

out. she is a p with the help of the doctors and their professionalism and they took care of her and now she is stable and she recovered so i just want to say i hope you support rebuilding the project. thank you. >> thank you. >> wait for you to reset. >> good evening, commissioners. i'm eric brooks. i'm here representing the san francisco green party and the local grassroots organization. our city, as you know, and in strong opposition to this plan, as it is currently before you. so what we need to talk about is the actual meeting the true meaning of earthquake safety and hospitals. we need to remember back first of all in the 1906 earthquake,

that it was not the failure of buildings that was the issue. it was the failuror water systems and the failure of access to transportation, especially of our emergency vehicles. so you saw on the basis of earthquake safety, cpmc present to you their plan for how to give good service in san francisco for health care is to centralize in one large facility the hospital services for san francisco and they plan to downgrade facilities like st. luke's and others. they will also be in competition with facilities like st. francis making it likely they will be downgraded as well. so imagine in the case of an earthquake that 80% of the people can't get to those wonderful new high-class services because they can't get through the street system to get

to the hospital. that means what we really need is to make the cpmc cathedral help facility much smaller and make sure that all of the other ones are robust and so that we have an even spread across the city. this board of supervisors maneuvered them awhy from requiring this kind of thing. what you can do is you can make this project set the standard for citywide earthquake safe health care. thanks. >> good evening madam and mr. ppt ad vice president. thank you very much for calling my name. [laughter] i'm thomas robert simpson. the director of an arts organization called afro solo. we focus primarily in the arts-related issues around the

african-american community. we use our arts to deal with issues that are of importance to our community. one of those issues is health. and the idea of the health disparity that is oppressive lant in our community. we began with -- in 1999 by doing forums, performances, discussions around h.i.v./aids. as i learned more about the disparity, we ban to look at -- began to look at other issues such as cancer. we decided to have health fairs with the idea of providing people in our community, primarily the western edition, information, access and screenings with the idea that if we found people that had issues, they would know where to go take care of them but hopefully have people in those situations that did not have a problem.

so if a crisis occurred they would know where to go. i'm very happy to say that one of our significant community partners has been cpmc. they have been with us for the last five years helping wherever they could or as the need arose. and in our community, needs are quite, quite -- we are quite needy medically. i said that we work pro-primarily within the african-american community but we don't discriminate. we pair with another organization to do backpacks as well as screenings right before school starts. this past year we saw 1,500 people in about two hours. we're planning to expand that service this coming year. a big hospital is a big hospital. what's important to me as is most people are the people who we associate with that. one of the persons that has been very important is dr. carolyn

dyson who is here for you because of her work with health in the african-american community, i think of a woman by the name of janet who was about 48 years old, who was terribly afraid to go get a mammogram. she scheduled it several times but each time she came up with an education cushion not to do it and i introduced her to carolyn and through that association, after a lot of enticements she went and found something unusual. it scared her again. she went again and found that there was a false positive. through my association with carol, through cpmc, i felt honored to nominate her for an award the kqed as an unsung hero in the african-american community. there were 40 people who were nominated and i'm very happy to say that she was one of the people who was chosen. as we move forward with the rebuild program, as people in

our community just need help, it is really nice to know that there are really wonderful places that they can go to get help. i'm also really happy to hear that in terms of them surfing the core that the trend is -- and i'm hoping that the they will keep that trend moving in the upper direction so more and more and more people can be served. thank you very much. >> as you come forward, bernadette smith, ramon -- and rebecca rolf. >> good evening. sue hester. 35 years ago, i was -- i sat on west bay health system's agency board. on the long-term planning committee. we were struggling with some of the same issues, though they are much worse today. in terms of access to care, distribution of health care services, we had a lot more

hospitals and they were much better distributed than we do now. the is that you mr. brooks brought up is a real one. in an earthquake, access to care, it is not so much building collapse that is the immediate problem. it is people getting access geographically over a mountain to hospitals and we are now concentrating them exclusive ply in a small area of the city. and cpmc is a large part of that decision because they have concentrated their facilities. i want to talk about something no one is talking about. the mayor's office took it off the table. this is a project that is being built intentionally. it is moving intentionally to one of the most congested transit issue areas of the city, an area the city knows needs massive transit, geary rail and

van ness rail and that has been taken off the table and this project should be required to -- they are tunneling under van ness. it is a state highway. it is a very critical place and yet they are intentionally banning other sites that are not as bad transit-wise putting people into one very intense -- area that will put over capacity already congested intersections at van mess in and market. van ness and geary and van ness and post. it is an intentional act in vie ligse of ceqa. you have to pay a-- violation of ceqa. you have to pay attention to it. fument >> good evening. i'm bernadette smith. i am also a registered nurse. in the interest of time, i'll hold my remarks and be here to

answer any questions that you might have. >> thank you very much. >> [speaking spanish] >> good evening, honorable commissioners. my name is ramon. i'm an employee of cpmc. for over 12 years. thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak about this because we need to construct a hospital and rebuild st. luke's. >> [speaking spanish]

>> i also work and am committed to my job. >> [speaking spanish] >> my job as a housekeeper is to guarantee that the patients have a comfortable and clean place to get well and that their families can focus on them and not on the distractions that sometimes happen in old hospitals. >> [speaking spanish] >> my job as a pharmaceutical technician is to ensure that the

medicines that patients need are delivered correctly and timely. >> [speaking spanish] >> i think that the best way to serve the patients in the recovery is to keep a clean and comfortable environment. >> [speaking spanish] >> i also believe that the best way to serve the patients in their recovery is to have the equipment and builds that are more modern to give the care to the patients that need it. >> [speaking spanish] >> it will give the patients of san francisco a place to recover in comfort. >> [speaking spanish]

>> cathedral hill will give the patients of san francisco a modern hospital that will give the best care. >> [speaking spanish] >> for the sake of the patients that i have seen and the ones that i will see in the future, i implore the commissioners to recommend cathedral hill. thank you. >> thank you very much. >> and the next speakers will be olivia fay, nick, camellia and -- >> good evening, commissioners. i really thank you for being here tonight. i know it is a late night. my name is rebecca rolf. i'm here to speak on behalf of cpmc. it has been a long night. we've heard a lot of testimony. a lot of compelling stories.

and i need to tell you i'm not a medical expert, nor am i a planning expert. but have i been struck by two things. one of them is cpmc's willingness to invest in san francisco and continue to build a state of the art medical facilities to serve our citizens and the second is cpmc's investment in the communities that make up san francisco. i will say that cpmc has made a deep investment in the center and in the center's ability to serve the community. i want to give you just a couple of examples of that. one of our board members is paula, who is cpmc's manager of community relations. she is one of our hardest working board members. she works practically full time at the center as a second job, third job, i guess she is a single parent as well. financial contributions. i know they have significantly -- many other medical organizations and medical services for the community including organizations that,

you know, provide critical safety net services to low-income folks and they are partnering with us currently to provide a series of workshops and lectures and outreach efforts to reach seniors, folks often isolated without information on medical services and finally we're interested in partnering with them to bring programs to the low-income folksed a they open their new center. i think they have made a deep commitment to the community. i encourage us to allow them to continue to make that investment. and i encourage your support. >> good evening, commissioners. thank you for being here tonight to listen to this very important item. my name is olivia. i am the executive director to have latina breast cancer agent. we're a small nonprofit agency

that works to assist the latina community who are low income and uninshirrd to acquire breast cancer screening ssts with no cost with dignity and without barriers. we have long standing partnerships with cpmc and st. luke's and other hospitals and local clinics here in san francisco county. cpmc has recognized the value of our partnership and supported our organization through the community benefits program for the past few years. their support has enabled our organization to help our community access quality care at no cost to women in need of screening, diagnostic and treatment services. as a leader within my community, i have served as a member of the st. luke's community advisory community and i participated on the outreach task force and we strongly support the recommendation to blue ribbon panel. we believe that st. luke's can thrive as part over the full

integrated system of care. the duplication of services at various sites is costly and inefficient. i'm here today to express our support for the commitment to rebuild st. luke's. and keep the hospital open so this hospital can continue to provide services for most vulnerable communities living in the southern part of the city. thank you. >> thank you. my name is alysa. i'm a diabetes educator. i've been doing it for about 20 years and have been at st. luke's for about three years now. i work as a diabetes educator for health first, which is a center for prevention and education and through them as an exercise group leader for people with diabetes and a consult and mentor. you have heard a lot about how

cpmc has supports a lot of different kinds of organizations and this is one -- i wanted to talk a little bit about how i work a little bit differently. the reason that i'm here is just to talk about one way they share the resources. hunters point area. i say one way because there are so many different ways they support different community programs. and in this case, the case of i want to talk about the resource that is shared is my expertise and experience as a diabetes educator and as a senior exercise leader and exercise nurse, in short sharing my time out in the community. i work with the department of public health, the city department of parks and recs and wmca. instead of only keeping me at st. luke's as a diabetes eaktr and using my experience there -- educator, using my experience there, i'm allowed, my expertise

is sent out into the community instead of just keeping it at st. luke's. diabetes is a horrible disease. of course it is worse in areas, as we all know, in areas where there is less financial resources and we also foe what works to control die -- know what works to control die sbeets lacking in those communities -- buy beets is -- diabetes is lacking in those communities. i'm so pleased to ask you to support. >> thank you. >> thank you presidents tierney and olague. members of the health commission. thank you for your attention tonight. it is a late evening. i'm a physician at st. luke's. i started working at an ob/gyn

at the hospital. you might ask why would somebody join the staff of a hospital that is battle weary and has many failing equipments and being in a recession, serving poor people and i really can't say anything other than how could you not work there. it is one of the best and exciting interesting places to work in the city. my history at st. luke's goes back as a medical student when i recruited patients at the hospital. we are at the intersection of diverse neighborhoods in the city and in any one day, i really -- it is difficult to see people from any background in the city. medical education activities were suspended during the uncertain future of our -- and i'm happy to say they have resumed. we continue to stimulate the minds of the next generation of practitioners and i encourage you, expeditiously approve plans

because we're really excite and cannot wait and there would be no shortage of committed people to work in this hospital in our area of the city. thank you. >> our final five speakers. desiree, caroline, linda. >> good evening, commissioners. it is good to see you again. my name is emily. i am a nurse. oncology certificate-ified nurse. i was here in november 2009 in strong support of rebuilding of cpmc. first and foremost, i believe that san francisco residents deserve the state of the art facility like cpmc. the consolidation of the services in one building is very important. we've had many patients that we have to move back and forth between campuses. i work in oncology.

most of the rooms are double roms. patients are going through chemotherapy. it is a very difficult time in their lives and they need privacy and infection control and the most difficult part is when a patient is newly diagnosed and -- they are at the end of their fight with cancer. it is disstressing to both patient and family. and at the most -- severe of -- disstress on the patient is when they are sharing a room and one person has passed away and we had to move a patient out of the room to take care of the deceased patient and leave them in the hallway in meantime since we don't have a private room to move them in. i think we can avoid all of that by having these private rooms in the new hospital. thank you for your time. >> good evening commissioners. and distinguished -- barbara

garcia. my name is linda richardson. i'm a long time resident of san francisco. a former planning commissioner. the time allotted is not enough to defend a legacy of a great organization like cpmc. i'm sure you have listened to many speakers tonight. i'm here, though, primarily as a patient for the last 25 years. i have actually used these services of cpmc and i can tell you that my daughter was from there as one of the finest medical -- in the country. a lot of people have spoken about hunters point and i really take it seriously when people come into a public forum to disseminate lies and misinformation. we're talking about the bayview health center. cpmc responded to the disparity in the health and established the bayview health center which

has become a model for the country. i cannot just sit by when you talk about the community by not invoking the african-american community, the breast health center and the work of one of -- cpmc staff, dr. dyson. the community has benefited tremendously and i wanted to -- as a bridge builder to con -- the immigrant community to the -- that working with cpmc will bring value to their community. the other parts of san francisco is exactly what that community has to benefit from. i want to remind my fellow commissioners also that building a state of the art facility in san francisco, you heard about reports and reports about the ratio of medical facilities and services. we are the leaders in the nation and then to elongate this

process? i know it is getting late. please do not delay this process. >> thank you. if there are any more cards, we really you to bring them up so we can get a sense of how much longer we're going to be listening to public testimony. >> good evening. my name is carol. i support the rebuilding of cpmc. i'm a critical care nurse at the campus and when the big earthquake hits, will the building still be standing? will it be functional? as a nurse in the i.c.u., i shouldn't have to worry about whether or not our life-saving equipment will function or that we may have to evacuate our patients because of the structural integrity of the building is in question. i work in the pacific campus and the building -- the rooms there were originally made for one patient. there are now two patients in this room. imagine that you are a patient

recovering from a surgery or illness in this room. this room is divided by a curtain. you can hear all of your roommate's conversations. there may be sounds or smells coming from the other side of the curtain. this is not a therapeutic environment for healing. for the caregivers it is very difficult to care for patience in such small spaces. there have been countless times where i have literally had to crawl turned bed to reach an outlet. to transfer a patient, we have to move everything from one side of the room to the other just to transfer a patient. did i mention our rooms are too small? we need a hospital -- with private rooms where we can take care of patients and their privacy and that we can have spaces that work efficiently. please consider rebuilding cpmc.

we need a hospital that can support today's technology so that we can continue to give the care that we can to our patients. thank you. >> thank you. >> good evening. members of the health commission. my name is desiree, a director of care at st. luke's health care center. i have worked there for the last 15 years. it is a true comment hospital. we need a new state of the art facility. health care center patients are sections of our diverse community. they come from all walks of life. we have 54% of our adults spanish speaking and 75% of our pediatric patients being spanish speaking. a large percentage of our patients are covered by government insurance. government insurance. over 80% of