"San Francisco General Hospital's Ward 86 derived its name by being sited on the sixth floor of Building 80, an aging red brick tower on the north end of the sprawling hospital campus. It was the first HIV/AIDS outpatient clinic in the nation, opening its doors on Jan. 1, 1983. Until its abrupt closure after last week's stabbing of social worker Alberto Rangel, allegedly by one of the clinic's patients, it hosted a drop-in clinic five days a week."
"It was never built to accommodate such a use. Building 80, notes Dr. Paul Volberding, one of the clinic's founding doctors, was erected a century ago and originally designed to house pediatric patients. It does not resemble any modern clinic most people have ever visited; there is no reception area separating the elevator and the middle of a working clinic. "Anyone with any kind of weapon," Volberding says, "there's just no barrier.""
Ward 86 opened Jan. 1, 1983 as the nation's first HIV/AIDS outpatient clinic and was sited on the sixth floor of Building 80, an aging red brick tower. Building 80 was erected about a century ago for pediatric patients and lacks modern clinic features such as a reception area separating elevators from clinical space. Patient demographics shifted beginning in the 1990s from middle-class, insured people to predominantly poor, homeless patients with mental illness and substance use. Security was minimal in earlier decades, but threats of violence have become increasingly commonplace. The clinic closed abruptly after the alleged stabbing of social worker Alberto Rangel by a regular patient.
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