UCSF Helen Diller Medical Center

Helen Diller Signage on fence outside Center

The Emergency Department at UCSF Helen Diller Medical Center provides care to patients with urgent medical conditions ranging from complex problems such as heart attacks and strokes to simple but pressing conditions such as cuts and broken bones. Care is provided 24 hours a day, serving more than 40,000 patients a year. It is the only Level 1 Geriatric Emergency Department in the Bay Area and also serves as a primary stroke and STEMI receiving center.

Our team includes board-certified emergency medicine specialists, nurses trained in emergency and critical care and other specialists who are called upon as needed in areas such as cardiology, neurology, gynecology, orthopedics, geriatrics, transplant, and surgery.

For patients 17 years old and younger, see the Children's Emergency Department at UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital San Francisco.

Psych-ED Model of Care Delivers Results

In 2024, our emergency department (ED) team at the UCSF Helen Diller Medical Center at Parnassus Heights established a new model for psychiatric emergency care in partnership with the UC San Francisco Department of Psychiatry. The model, says Maria Raven, MD, MPH, MS, vice chair and chief of emergency medicine at UCSF Helen Diller Medical Center, has been an unequivocal success.

“It has not only reduced overall length of stay by 33 percent – more than initially projected – but also reduced unnecessary hospitalizations, improved the flow in the ED, reduced workplace violence, and improved the experience and care for these patients.”

This impact supported the model’s selection as a winner of the American College of Emergency Physicians’ (ACEP’s) 2025 Quality Improvement (QI) Challenge Award. Each year, ACEP’s Quality & Patient Safety Committee and the Section of QI and Patient Safety “recognize and spotlight quality improvement and patient safety projects within emergency medicine” through the QI Challenge.

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