Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of the social media giant, and San Francisco pediatrician Priscilla Chan offered the donation to San Francisco General Hospital this week but a formal announcement is not expected for several days, according to the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper.
“Day in and day out, I witness the compassion and dedication of my colleagues as they work tirelessly to deliver the best available care to all of our patients,” Chan said when she revealed the donation.
SF General treats more than 100,000 patients annually, including the city’s sizable indigent population.
“Mark and I are proud to support such an important public hospital,” said Chan, who actually is a resident at the University of California hospital across town from SF General.
The donation, which was given to a foundation that helps fund hospital operations, is believed to be the largest gift ever from private individuals to a public hospital in the United States, the newspaper said.
A foundation official said the gift comes at a crucial time for the hospital, which has been trying to raise money to fully equip its new building built with a public-backed bond issue.
The new nine-story hospital and trauma center was built at the hospital’s existing 23-acre campus in the city’s Mission District, where its existing 1970s-era main building no longer met seismic standards.
It is expected to open this year.
“This precedent-setting grant is a key piece necessary to the completion and opening of the new building in December,” said Amanda Heier, chief executive officer of the San Francisco Hospital Foundation, who added that the gift was enough to fund some of the hospital’s future needs..
San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee said the city would name the new hospital after the Zuckerbergs.
“It’s incredibly gracious they have recognized the importance of this hospital to the entire city,” Lee said.
“They have made sure, in the future, there will be enough money to maintain and modernize it — they want a public hospital as important as this to be at world-class standards every year,” he said.
SF General CEO Sue Currin said Chan had trained alongside doctors at the public hospital and intimately understood its needs as well as its patient population.
The new building will double the size of SF General’s emergency room and add two trauma rooms and three operating rooms to the hospital, the newspaper said.
Mark Zuckerberg has earned billions of dollars since the Facebook website he founded as a Harvard University student became a public company in 2012.
