Swedish Medical Center

Swedish Medical Center is the largest nonprofit health provider in the Seattle metropolitan area. It operates five hospital campuses (in the Seattle neighborhoods of First Hill, Cherry Hill and Ballard, and the cities of Edmonds and Issaquah), ambulatory care centers in the cities of Redmond and Mill Creek, and Swedish Medical Group, a network of more than 100 primary-care and specialty clinics. It is affiliated with many other health care providers across Washington state, and had 8,886 employees and 6,023 credentialed physicians as of 2013.[2][3]

This article is about the Seattle-area hospital network. For the hospital in Englewood, Colorado, see Swedish Medical Center (Colorado). For hospitals in Sweden, see Category:Hospitals in Sweden.

Swedish Medical Center
Providence Health & Services
Swedish campus in Seattle's First Hill neighborhood
Geography
LocationFirst Hill, Cherry Hill, Ballard, Seattle, Washington, U.S.
Edmonds, Issaquah, Mill Creek, Redmond, Washington, U.S.
Coordinates47.6090°N 122.3228°W / 47.6090; -122.3228
Organisation
Care systemPrivate, non-profit
TypeFull-service inpatient and outpatient medical and surgical tertiary care, primary care, emergency and urgent care, palliative care
Services
Emergency departmentYes
Beds668[1]
History
Opened1910
Links
Websitewww.swedish.org

History

Dr. Nils August Johanson founded Swedish Medical Center in 1910 as Seattle's first modern nonprofit medical facility. Dr. Johanson was an immigrant from Sweden and was the father-in-law of Seattle businessman Elmer Nordstrom; the medical center's name pays tribute to Johanson's heritage. In 1932, Swedish opened the first cancer-care center west of the Mississippi.[4] The board of trustees for Swedish Hospital were historically of Swedish descent until the election of two non-Swede doctors in 1968.[5]

Swedish originally started with its First Hill campus, but began to expand its network by merging with Seattle General Hospital (founded 1895) and the Doctors Hospital (founded 1944) in May 1978.[6][7][8] Swedish then expanded outside First Hill when it purchased Ballard Community Hospital in the nearby neighborhood of Ballard (founded 1928) on July 1, 1992.[6] The Ballard purchase was followed up with that of Providence Seattle Medical Center (founded 1876) in the Central District from Providence Health & Services in February 2000.[9][10] After a decade, Swedish began expanding outside Seattle and King County with its lease of Stevens Hospital (founded January 26, 1964) in Edmonds on September 1, 2010,[11] and the opening of a brand-new campus in Issaquah in July 2011.[12]

In 2009, Swedish partnered with The Polyclinic to implement electronic health records,[13] and in 2012 it became affiliated with Providence Health & Services.[14] In 2014, Swedish formed new partnerships with Group Health Cooperative[15] and Pacific Medical Centers.[16]

COVID-19 pandemic

In 2020, the hospital administration threatened to fire a physician for wearing personal protective equipment outside a patient care area during the COVID-19 pandemic.[17] The hospital has since backed down.[17] It requires workers infected with coronavirus to exhaust sick and vacation time before granting them 80 hours of emergency time off.[18]

Swedish Medical Center is one of only two hospitals in Washington that can perform extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, and so it accepted patients with the most extreme cases of COVID-19 during the pandemic.[19] The hospital is performing clinical trials of Tocilizumab to counter the effects of a cytokine storm, an extreme immune reaction that occurs in the most extreme cases of COVID-19.[19]

References
  1. "History, Facts & Figures". Swedish Medical Center. Retrieved April 2, 2020.
  2. "Swedish Medical Center". Hospital-data.com. Retrieved January 20, 2016.
  3. "Swedish Medical Center". U.S. News & World Report. Retrieved January 20, 2016.
  4. "Swedish: A History of Excellence". Swedish Medical Center. Retrieved March 20, 2018.
  5. "Non-Swedes Elected To Board of Hospital". The Seattle Times. December 18, 1968. p. 56.
  6. Bodemer, Charles (June 19, 1980). The Early Development of Hospitals in Seattle (Speech). First Medical Staff Meeting of the Seattle Doctors Pavilion. Seattle. Retrieved January 20, 2021.
  7. "Seattle General Hospital" (PDF). State of Washington.
  8. Andrews, Mildred (December 9, 1998). "Seattle's Providence Hospital moves to a new building on September 24, 1911". HistoryLink. Retrieved January 20, 2021.
  9. Song, Kyung (January 12, 2007). "Providence hospital's new name inspires ire among Central Area residents". The Seattle Times. Retrieved January 20, 2021.
  10. LeWarne, Charles (November 16, 2020). "Stevens Memorial Hospital (Edmonds)". HistoryLink. Retrieved January 20, 2021.
  11. Ostrom, Carol (May 30, 2011). "Today's hospital: spacious, single rooms, talking beds". The Seattle Times. Retrieved January 20, 2021.
  12. "Swedish partners with the Polyclinic". Swedish Blog.
  13. Ostrom, Carol (February 1, 2012). "Swedish alliance with Providence is now complete". The Seattle Times. Retrieved March 20, 2018.
  14. Lamm, Greg (August 22, 2014). "Group Health ends 20-year relationship with Virginia Mason, switches to Swedish". www.bizjournals.com. Retrieved March 20, 2018.
  15. Bauman, Valerie (February 3, 2014). "Providence will partner with PacMed, reveals how it keeps religion separate". www.bizjournals.com. Retrieved March 20, 2018.
  16. Richtel, Matt (March 31, 2020). "Frightened Doctors Face Off With Hospitals Over Rules on Protective Gear". New York Times. Retrieved March 31, 2020.
  17. "'It's Like Walking Into Chernobyl,' One Doctor Says Of Her Emergency Room". NPR.org. Retrieved April 15, 2020.
  18. "'I Felt Like Rip Van Winkle': One Of The 1st U.S. Doctors With COVID-19 Is Back Home". NPR.org. Retrieved April 15, 2020.

Sources
  • Nordstrom, Katharine Johanson; Marshall, Margaret (2002) My Father's Legacy: The Story of Doctor Nils August Johanson, Founder of Swedish Medical (University of Washington Press) ISBN 978-0295982656
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