Vision Statement for the Laguna Honda Foundation

 

Come see us!  The one-time Victorian almshouse that became the Laguna Honda Hospital and Rehabilitation Center is about to go out on the town, and we bet you won’t recognize what you see. 

 

Where We’ve Been, Where We’re Going

The new Laguna Honda is a renovated and cherished San Francisco icon, a civic amenity that every San Franciscan can point to with pride, and a leading example of excellence in long-term care.
 

It is a lush public park with paths to stroll on, a petting farm to delight children, and a community theatre with an exciting annual schedule of concerts and lectures. 

 

It is a distinguished regional center for clinical research, and, most importantly of all, a community of care where residents and staff are building on a 140-year tradition of service to reinvent long term care for the 21st century.

“Laguna Honda” means deep lagoon, and the depth of its possibilities are limitless.

 

Imagining Laguna Honda

When Laguna Honda began its service to San Francisco, 17 years after the gold rush in 1866, it may have been hard to imagine that a charitable enterprise could put its unique stamp on the cutting edge civic and cultural enterprise that was fast becoming a San Francisco trademark. Such is the ambition of the 21st century Laguna Honda. The sleek and accessible design of the new facility is an emblem of the challenge the organization has set for itself. 

 

When it opens in the spring of 2010, Laguna Honda will be the nation’s flagship skilled nursing center.  It will be the largest and most modern facility of its kind in the country.  Both its size and its novelty present an opportunity to implement innovative models of nursing care on a wholly new scale.

 

To support this unprecedented innovation, the Laguna Honda leadership is committed to expanding the organization’s potential for meeting the skilled nursing and rehabilitation needs of the diverse communities of San Francisco.

 

As the old walls come down, and new resident households open up to magnificent views of the city and the bay, the view of Laguna Honda itself is about to change. 

 

The Clinical Mission

Laguna Honda is the site of countless daily acts of skill and compassion. Its interdisciplinary care teams are committed to a resident-centered approach that meets the unique needs of each person.  It is a commitment that has successfully improved the lives of thousands of people. 

 

Philanthropic support for the center’s clinical mission will advance the practice of resident-centered care not only in San Francisco but nationwide.  The center’s state-of-the-art facility makes it a natural choice for innovative programming. 

 

Individual and organizational support will fund collaborative ventures among leading practitioners, underwrite pilot projects to improve nursing home practices, and provide training programs to put the best ideas in nursing care into practice. 

 

The development of a nationally-recognized Laguna Honda Initiative in Nursing Care will put the country’s newest skilled nursing facility to its highest and best use.  It will draw from a cross-section of new and existing models to produce a novel approach that could only be developed in the unique setting of the new Laguna Honda campus, but that will assist practitioners everywhere to improve care. 

 

The Community Mission

With philanthropic efforts to support it, the new Laguna Honda will become a project of civic San Francisco at its most creative.

 

Laguna Honda’s lush 62-acre campus has an uncultivated potential to become one of San Francisco’s landmark parks. The Laguna Honda Park and Gardens, complete with petting zoo and walking trails, flower gardens and groves of native trees, will be a natural weekend destination, the perfect place to settle in with a summer novel, take a lovers’ stroll, or enjoy a picnic with friends and family. 

 

Besides the outdoor amenities, the campus’ Gerald Simon Theatre, which, in another era, played host to the likes of Bing Crosby, Merv Griffin, Eddie Fisher, Phil Harris, Donald O’Connor and Frankie Lane is well suited for evenings of jazz or pop, book readings, film screenings or a speakers’ series.

 

The gardens and the theatre will serve as an important component of the Laguna Honda therapeutic mission by bringing the life of the city onto the Laguna Honda campus.

 

The Research Mission

The Laguna Honda community of clinicians and therapeutic specialists boasts nationally recognized experts in a wide variety of fields including medical ethics, palliative care, dementia care, and the intersection of health care and poverty, among others.

 

The establishment of The Laguna Honda Research Institute will make grant funding available for these clinicians and others around the country to support their research, publish findings, host colloquia on the campus, and present their work at conferences globally.

 

The Institute will not only cultivate the professional development of a talented staff by providing the kinds of opportunities that are often limited to better funded private-sector institutions, it will enable Laguna Honda to take its place as a leader in its field.

 

Join Us

The new Laguna Honda will open its campus to community activities and cultural events.  It will integrate public participation with cutting-edge research into improved long term care.  And it will continue to honor a 140-year tradition of service to the people of San Francisco. 

 

Come see us.  You never would have guessed our lagoon was so deep.