San Francisco’s Only Level 1 Trauma Center: Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center
Since 1872, Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center (ZSFG) has been dedicated to serving the residents of San Francisco and northern San Mateo County as a steadfast resource in times of crisis. 150 years later—from the 1906 earthquake through the COVID-19 pandemic—ZSFG remains the leader in San Francisco’s comprehensive commitment to effective trauma response and exceptional public health.
Level 1 Trauma Centers are designed to treat patients that have critical injuries—those threatening “life or limb.” Zuckerberg San Francisco General’s Trauma Center was designed to serve more than 1.5 million San Francisco and northern San Mateo residents with staff resources that include the many doctors and nurses on 24-hour duty as well as the first-responders called in during catastrophes.
As the only Level 1 Trauma Center serving this region, ZSFG is prepared and equipped with the resources and expertise to handle both individual traumas where immediate survival is a concern as well as respond to large scale public health emergencies.
Additionally, the Hospital regularly receives domestic and international patients from San Francisco International Airport (SFO) who are seeking critical or specialty care. More than 3 million travelers use SFO annually, and any trauma patients from the
You Can Make a Difference
The Trauma Center at ZSFG is the great equalizer—any one of us or our loved ones could come to ZSFG in an emergency. The facility serves a critical role for the millions of people who live in, visit, and travel through San Francisco every year.
Your donation supports initiatives that are born of necessity, designed by those on the frontlines, and created to ensure our community can weather any storm. Will you join us?
A Trauma Center for a Changing City
San Francisco General Hospital has been a pioneer in trauma care for more than fifty years. The first Level 1 Emergency and Trauma Center was established at Zuckerberg San Francisco General in 1968. In 1972, it received its Federal Trauma Center designation, which it has held ever since. And in 1976, a Trauma Center opened that would serve the community for decades to come.
Forty years later, in 2016, the facility was completely redesigned (with input from more than 450 staff members) and reopened as a state-of-the-art showpiece, more than doubling its capacity to include six new trauma resuscitation suites as well as full internal and external decontamination areas for disasters. Thoughtful and innovative details include everything from breakaway doors to accommodate large equipment to dialysis connections in every ICU room so patients don’t need to be relocated. Today, frontline staff at ZSFG respond to more than 2,400 trauma activations annually and never turn away trauma victims, even when the ER is at capacity.
An Ounce of Prevention
The medical providers at ZSFG are actively committed to preventing—as well as healing—traumatic injuries.
This is evident in grassroots initiatives like Helmets for All in Need, funded by an Equity & Innovation Grant from the San Francisco General Hospital Foundation. The helmet program provides youth or adult patients in need with access to a bicycle helmet and traumatic brain injury and helmet safety education.
On a larger scale, ZSFG is also home to one of the leading hospital-based violence intervention programs, the San Francisco Wraparound Project. A partnership between UCSF and ZSFG surgeons, emergency medicine doctors, and community-based patient advocates, the Wraparound Program is vital to ending the cycle of violence faced by many in our community.
Case management staff work to change the circumstances that first brought patients to the emergency department. Its success has led to similar models being adopted around the country, giving health care providers a voice in community-level change.
Crisis Response
No one plans to end up in the emergency department, and most people will be lucky enough to never see the inside of an operating room or resuscitation bay.
But when tragedy strikes, ZSFG’s Trauma Center is prepared—whether it’s a single traumatic injury or a city-wide emergency. From one gunshot victim to mass violence, from a bicycle accident to a plane crash, ZSFG is equipped, trained, and prepared to quickly scale its response in any emergency–just as it did in July 2013 when more than 180 people were injured when an Asiana Airlines flight crashed during its final descent into SFO.
Every year, ZSFG tests its systems, protocols, and team members to ensure it remains the best place to be in the worst of times. These drills test the emergency protocols, triage capabilities, and staff response to treating an influx of trauma patients alongside everyday surgeries and sick patients.
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