Laguna Honda Hospital Celebrates Its 150th Anniversary
This month marks 150 years of service for Laguna Honda Hospital, located in San Francisco's Forest Hill.
At Reset San Francsico, we use our Community Camera feature to shine a spotlight on the amazing community activism and engagement that is taking place all across San Francisco that unfortunately is too often over-looked.
For today’s #CommunityCamera post, we wanted to share the story of Laguna Honda Hospital, which this month is celebrating 150 years of service in Forest Hill.
Please read on for an informative yet entertaining look at the hospital’s past, present, and future, which was written by Cheryl Guerrero.
Note: This article was originally published by Hoodline on October 19, 2016.
Laguna Honda Hospital Celebrates 150 Years Of Service
by Cheryl Guerrero
Laguna Honda Hospital marked its sesquicentennial anniversary on Saturday with an event to celebrate the hospital’s history, service, staff and residents.
Laguna Honda’s executive administrator Mivic Hirose kicked off the event, with a brief program that included speeches by Mayor Ed Lee, SF Health Director Barbara Garcia, District 7 Supervisor Norman Yee (pictured above), former hospital resident Daniel Berrner and others.
Lee presented Hirose (pictured below) with a proclamation from the city, naming Saturday Laguna Honda Hospital Day in San Francisco. The hospital also received a proclamation from the California State Legislature.
The community celebration included hospital tours, music, arts and crafts, food trucks, a screening of the documentary “States of Grace,” and a visit from the Cal Men’s Basketball Team.
Many of Laguna Honda’s residents, whom Hirose called “our core and our reason for being,” also attended the festivities, enjoying live music, visits with the facility’s farm animals and portraits drawn by a caricaturist.
The skilled nursing and rehabilitation center, located on 62 acres west of Twin Peaks near Forest Hill, is owned by the San Francisco Department of Public Health.
When the new hospital buildings opened in 2010, the facility became the “most modern skilled nursing rehabilitation center in the country,” and the first green-certified hospital in California.
In her opening remarks, Hirose said the celebration was “to show gratitude and pride, because in the past 150 years, the commitment of the city, the staff [and] the residents of San Francisco has not wavered.”
Laguna Honda began in 1866 as an almshouse for the poor and destitute of San Francisco. Taking its name from the Spanish term for the natural spring-fed deep lagoon on the site, it was situated on 87 acres, where residents cultivated their own food and raised livestock.
In subsequent years, it adjusted its purpose to meet the needs of the city, becoming a hospital in a smallpox epidemic of the late 1800s, then a small asylum, before assisting in the aftermath of the 1906 earthquake.
Construction of the buildings that would become the Laguna Hospital and Rehabilitation Center began in 1924, and the facility opened its doors in 1926.
Today, Laguna Honda is a 780-bed facility that has earned five stars from the Federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services for quality.
As Mayor Lee noted, the “facility produces the most extensive rehabilitation program for … our residents to recover from strokes, spinal cord injuries, orthopedic disorders, brain injuries, neurological conditions, amputations and other major trauma.”
One attendee, former employee Laura Blue (pictured below), traveled up from Burlingame for the celebration.
Nine years ago, when she was a nurse manager for the Positive Care Unit, Blue would occasionally bring her daughters to work with her.
On Saturday, she brought her daughter once again, “for her to remember,” she said. She described the festivities and new facility as “just amazing.”
“It’s beautiful,” she said. “They’ve come so far in all these years.”
Blue was excited to visit her old unit and co-workers, as well as to see the changes the hospital has undergone since her departure.
“It’s great to see a lot of the old hospital in the new hospital,” she said. “All the programs that were important in the old hospital are incorporated in the new hospital in better surroundings … much more up-to-date.”
