Marc Andreesen and his wife, Laura, are giving a $27.5 million gift to enhance Stanford Hospital. The purpose? To upgrade Stanford’s ER, and also to fund an Emergency facility in the new hospital that Stanford will build.
So who is Marc Andreesen? Back in the 90’s he founded a pretty cool little web browser called Netscape. That makes him kind of a big deal. In this decade he continues to blaze trails by co-founding an amazing venture called, Ning. Ning allows you to generate your own social network within minutes and it’s a free service.
And he’s a blogger.
He lists of variety of reasons for his gift, but this one struck me the most:
“Finally, it is a perhaps sad fact of our current medical system that in any American community, the emergency room is also the backstop for people who either don’t have health insurance or cannot gain prompt access into a convoluted primary care system. The Stanford ER serves that purpose in Silicon Valley, and we think as long as our health care system works the way it does, that is a purpose that is clearly worth supporting.”
This is philanthropy at it’s best. There is so much complaining and grandstanding over our health care system, and the sad fact is that despite all of the debate, nothing much seems to change. Here is someone who says, “I see a problem and I’m going to give aid where aid is needed the most.” And anyone who reads medical or nursing blogs knows that out of every department in the hospital, the ER bears the brunt of this problem.
Did I mention that Andressen is a blogger?
Now I can’t say for sure (Heck, I can’t say it at all) that Andressen was inspired to give after reading reading ER blogs like GruntDoc, ERnursey, and Emergiblog. But hey. A blogger can dream.
At any rate, I thank you, Marc Andressen, and I applaud you.
Now who do I talk to about getting a job at Stanford hospital? I love working in shiny new facilities.