More than just a bus ride
By Adeel Iqbal, San Francisco Fellow '10
It was 12:45, and I had 30 minutes to get to San Francisco General Hospital & Trauma Center, where San Francisco City Hall Fellows’ seminar for the week was being hosted. I Googled the address, and pasted it into 511.org – a free, one-stop phone and web source for traffic and transit in the Bay Area region: I wanted to know the quickest way via public transport to get to the hospital.
From City Hall, the 511 web application directed me to take the MUNI 9, so I made my way to the nearest bus stop off Market Street. Another Fellow had hopped on the same bus a couple stops earlier and we began chatting about what we had been up to that morning as soon as we saw one another. Within a few stops, we were forced to speak a bit louder – noise and the number of people on the bus had quickly elevated as we got closer to our destination. Little did we know that more than half of our fellow riders would be getting off with us.
As soon as the MUNI 9 stopped on Potrero Avenue at 22nd street, 70 percent of passengers trickled out, and all of them walked to the hospital entrance. Watching this pack of people walk in a single file line for their appointments was our first lesson about the importance of SFGH – owned and operated by the City and County of San Francisco, Department of Public Health – to the city and its residents.
Our subsequent discussions with some of the hospital’s leading doctors and nurses and tour with the Chief of Medical Staff would only add to our understanding. We would learn that SFGH is the only Trauma Center (Level 1) in San Francisco. That it provides the only Psychiatric Emergency Services in the city. That it takes 30 percent of all ambulance traffic in the city. That more than 60 percent of its patients are uninsured or covered by Medi-Cal (as compared to approximately 20 percent citywide). And that it is where each of us and our families would go for treatment if injured in a natural disaster in the city.
As I saw and heard about the populations served by SFGH and learned about the innovative programs developed by the hospital to address San Francisco residents' diverse needs, I began to consider the impacts of not having SFGH in San Francisco. How would the gap be filled? What alternatives would the city’s poor and uninsured have? If a natural disaster struck and hundreds of thousands of people were injured, where would they go?
No doubt, our visit further opened my eyes to the pertinence of solid public health services and medical infrastructure within a municipality. I was inspired by the level of planning conducted by the city government to address unique needs of residents and visitors. And from the start of my trip when I turned to 511, each experience of the day helped me to better appreciate everything our cities do for us – much of which we rarely even stop to consider.
It was 12:45, and I had 30 minutes to get to San Francisco General Hospital & Trauma Center, where San Francisco City Hall Fellows’ seminar for the week was being hosted. I Googled the address, and pasted it into 511.org – a free, one-stop phone and web source for traffic and transit in the Bay Area region: I wanted to know the quickest way via public transport to get to the hospital.
From City Hall, the 511 web application directed me to take the MUNI 9, so I made my way to the nearest bus stop off Market Street. Another Fellow had hopped on the same bus a couple stops earlier and we began chatting about what we had been up to that morning as soon as we saw one another. Within a few stops, we were forced to speak a bit louder – noise and the number of people on the bus had quickly elevated as we got closer to our destination. Little did we know that more than half of our fellow riders would be getting off with us.
As soon as the MUNI 9 stopped on Potrero Avenue at 22nd street, 70 percent of passengers trickled out, and all of them walked to the hospital entrance. Watching this pack of people walk in a single file line for their appointments was our first lesson about the importance of SFGH – owned and operated by the City and County of San Francisco, Department of Public Health – to the city and its residents.
Our subsequent discussions with some of the hospital’s leading doctors and nurses and tour with the Chief of Medical Staff would only add to our understanding. We would learn that SFGH is the only Trauma Center (Level 1) in San Francisco. That it provides the only Psychiatric Emergency Services in the city. That it takes 30 percent of all ambulance traffic in the city. That more than 60 percent of its patients are uninsured or covered by Medi-Cal (as compared to approximately 20 percent citywide). And that it is where each of us and our families would go for treatment if injured in a natural disaster in the city.
As I saw and heard about the populations served by SFGH and learned about the innovative programs developed by the hospital to address San Francisco residents' diverse needs, I began to consider the impacts of not having SFGH in San Francisco. How would the gap be filled? What alternatives would the city’s poor and uninsured have? If a natural disaster struck and hundreds of thousands of people were injured, where would they go?
No doubt, our visit further opened my eyes to the pertinence of solid public health services and medical infrastructure within a municipality. I was inspired by the level of planning conducted by the city government to address unique needs of residents and visitors. And from the start of my trip when I turned to 511, each experience of the day helped me to better appreciate everything our cities do for us – much of which we rarely even stop to consider.
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