With a $75 million gift to the San Francisco General Hospital Foundation, the soon-to-be renovated SF hospital and its under-construction new building will be getting the name The Priscilla and Mark Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center. The Facebook CEO and his wife Priscilla Chan, who is currently a pediatric resident at UCSF, previously gave $25 million to the Ebola fight with an October gift to the Centers for Disease Control.
As the Chronicle reports:
San Francisco General’s new nine-story, 283-bed hospital will include an emergency room that is double the size of the existing one, two additional trauma rooms and three more operating rooms. In addition to helping to outfit the new center, the Zuckerberg-Chan donation is expected to be used to help pay for converting the existing hospital into an ambulatory care center, which will also have skilled nursing beds.
Construction of the new hospital, on the existing SF General site, is being funded by a voter-approved bond initiative, but the new donation will go toward equipment and furnishings.
Bay area tech billionaires have been very generous recently in the healthcare realm. The Zuckerberg-Chans were clearly encouraged by vocal benefactor and Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff who gave a $200 million gift that added his name to UCSF's new children's hospital. And local venture capitalist Ron Conway's $40 million gift last year is what put his name on the newly open UCSF Ron Conway Family Gateway Medical Building in Mission Bay.
Though Zuckerberg had been criticized in recent years for not showing the generosity of some of his tech titan peers, he and Chan have made quick work of giving away large sums in the past year. Last May they made their single biggest gift to date, $120 million, to Bay Area public schools. That donation was the first part of a pledge Zuckerberg made to the Silicon Valley Community Fund for $1.1 billion in Facebook stock. His current net worth stands at around $33 billion.
The Priscilla and Mark Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center is slated to be open later this year. In a statement, Zuckerberg says, "Priscilla and I believe that everyone deserves access to high quality health care. The General serves anyone who lives, works in or visits San Francisco. We can think of no better place to focus our philanthropy in San Francisco than The General."
Chan adds, "Through my training at The General, I know firsthand the vital health care and trauma services this hospital provides to anyone who lives, works or travels through San Francisco... Mark and I are proud to support such an important public hospital."
