ST. JOSEPH HEALTH
Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital in Santa Rosa, Calif., has received a $2 million gift and challenge grant to help fund an emergency department and trauma center expansion that the facility began in May and expects to complete in early 2014.
The Ernest L. and Ruth W. Finley Foundation will give an additional $500,000 on top of its $2 million gift if the capital campaign for the emergency department raises $2 million by the end of the year.
Santa Rosa Memorial is completing the $15 million expansion because the emergency department — which administrators said is the busiest in the region — is overcrowded. Patient demand is expected to increase as the region's large senior adult population ages.
The construction will add nearly 50 percent more square footage and will increase capacity from 19 beds to 26 private beds, plus a triage room. Santa Rosa also will make operational changes designed to improve the efficiency of the emergency department and reduce wait times. A trauma center will provide specialty care to critically ill patients.
Santa Rosa originally had planned a $68 million emergency department and intensive care unit expansion, but the economic downturn forced the facility to postpone and more narrowly focus its plans.
The Finley Foundation is named for Ernest and Ruth Finley. Ernest Finley established the Sonoma County, Calif., Press Democrat in 1897 through a merger of two papers. After his death, Ruth served as the president and publisher of the Press Democrat. Ruth Finley married Evert Person, who became publisher of the daily paper. After Ruth's death Evert married Norma Person, who now serves as the Finley Foundation's president. Evert Person died in 2011.
The Persons' largest gift to the hospital was $5 million, for the Norma and Evert Person Heart and Vascular Institute that opened in 2008.
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