Z is for Zion Zeitgeist

Zeitgeist is an imported word without an exact English equivalent. Perhaps the best translation is the "spirit of an era." While it may be too soon to classify recent developments at UCSF Medical Center at Mount Zion as indicative of a new era, there is an emerging Zion zeitgeist that UCSF's 17,000 employees and San Franciscans in general have begun to sense.

That this awareness may be a little delayed is easy to understand. When UCSF and Mount Zion merged in 1990, Mount Zion's history of community service and primary care seemed overshadowed by its more specialty-minded tertiary care partner headquartered on Parnassus Heights. A decade of changes in the health care marketplace, marked by declining reimbursements, a citywide surplus of hospital beds and UCSF's decision to merge, and later de-merge, with Stanford Health Systems, seemed to marginalize Mount Zion even more.

Yet throughout the turmoil, the Divisadero Street mainstay was being transformed. And now, early in the 21st century, Mount Zion boasts a rejuvenated alignment of patient care and research centers, new buildings, including the 88,000 square-foot outpatient clinical cancer structure that opened two years ago, and a new magnetism. In place of the full-service community hospital, UCSF Mount Zion has become home to the UCSF Comprehensive Cancer Center, a research and patient care facility; the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine; the Women's Health Center, and a host of faculty practices in everything from dermatology to urology. This is to say nothing of specialty clinics in pain and sleep disorders or the legendary Art for Recovery program, which challenges patients to express their feelings and experiences through the healing powers of art. With exploratory discussions about the replacement of the aging hospital on the Parnassus campus now under way, Mount Zion figures in a variety of scenarios. Whatever the outcome of these discussions, one fact is clear. Mount Zion, near the geographical heart of San Francisco, continues to have a strong pulse and a long future.

by Jeff Miller