The Harold H. Heath Tower opened at the corner of Broadway and Boylston Avenue, next door to the hospital, in The opening of the Heath Tower marked a shift in the relationship between the hospital and the doctors who treated their patients there. For its whole history doctors who admitted patients to Swedish had their offices elsewhere.
The Heath Tower had some hospital facilities, but it was primarily a space for doctors' offices. Although the doctors were not employed by the hospital, having an office next door made it more likely they would admit their patients to Swedish. The facility connected the doctors more closely to the hospital. Through the s, expansion continued. On November 1, , the hospital dedicated the Lawrence M. Arnold Pavilion.
It also housed the first self-contained outpatient surgery unit in the region. The Southwest Addition opened in Glaser Auditorium, and a new bed obstetrics department that replaced those of Seattle General and Doctors hospitals. The maternity ward featured two rooms that could accommodate fathers who wanted to stay with the mother during labor and delivery.
In the s and s the Seattle area had seen tremendous grown, increasing in population from , to , But in the s and s, an abrupt slowdown took place. By the city's population had dropped to ,, and hospitals in central King County suffered from low occupancy rates. Swedish Hospital would be at the helm of the new organization. It would take 12 years to work out the details and finalize the merger.
In the Certificate of Need filed by the three hospitals with the Washington State Hospital Commission seeking permission for the merger and related construction, the hospitals argued that the merger would reduce the number of acute care beds in the central region of King County and eliminate two emergency rooms. Both of these actions fulfilled recommendations made by the King County Hospital Development Steering Committee in The merger was approved in and the three hospitals officially merged operations on May 14, The Swedish Hospital Board of Trustees gained three members from each of the other hospitals' boards.
Construction was already underway on yet another pavilion at Cherry Street and Minor Avenue to replace of the closed hospitals' beds. This raised Swedish's total number of beds to and made it the biggest hospital in Washington, which it remains today. During the s, Doctors and Seattle General had struggled financially, when Swedish had not.
Partly this was due to their reliance on a general practice model in which family practitioners rather than specialists predominated among the staff. This trend had begun in the s and became more pronounced in the latter half of the century. Also, those two hospitals had not emphasized the development of a wide array of services that would encourage doctors to admit their patients to the hospital, such as the Tumor Institute and the outpatient surgery unit.
The s also marked a change in how doctors received their training. Before this, all doctors spent the year following medical school in a series of internships, giving them a wide breadth of experience before going into their residency program for their chosen specialty. In the new system, most doctors began their residency programs immediately after medical school. In order to offer residents more depth of experience, Swedish affiliated with University Hospital.
Doctors Hospital had a well-established family residency program, which Swedish adopted after the merger. In Swedish completed a Certificate of Need to add 32 beds, 27 for patients getting leukemia and aplastic anemia treatment, five for other patients. Swedish argued that its bed increase would not adversely impact other hospitals because the patients would come from around the country and the world for the cancer treatment.
During the course of the approval process, Swedish was criticized for its relatively low amount of care for the poor. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer described an exchange between members of the King County Health Planning Council and hospital officials as a "blistering attack from council members concerned about the level of subsidized care offered by the First Hill medical complex.
Swedish countered that it did not turn patients away and that its patients tended to be referred by their doctors and had insurance. Also, Swedish had not received as much of the Hill-Burton Act funds as had other area hospitals, thereby reducing their legal obligation for free care. In the end, the hospital agreed to triple its free care and the expansion was approved.
The s and s saw a tremendous physical expansion of Swedish Hospital. In addition to the projects described above, the Elmer J. Nordstrom Medical Tower, a floor medical office building located at Madison Street and Summit Avenue, opened in and named in honor of one of Swedish Hospital's longtime Trustees and the son-in-law of Dr. The hospital opened a multi-story parking garage that covered the entire block bordered by Cherry and James streets and Minor and Boren avenues.
Swedish covered several blocks and had even had parts of two streets vacated so the buildings could be closer together. In the federal government made changes to how Medicare paid for patient care. Whereas before Medicare paid for care through a fee-for-service model, reimbursing doctors and hospitals for whatever treatments or testing they decided needed to be done for a particular condition, the new system, known as the prospective payment system, only reimbursed a pre-established amount for each disease or ailment.
Of particular concern for Swedish, and other hospitals, were limitations on how many nights of hospital care would be covered. It became essential that hospital and medical staff cooperate to ensure that patients received the care they needed after discharge. In addition to concerns relating to patient care, these changes, and others set in motion by a general trend toward managed care, made it more important for hospitals to reduce overhead costs and to attract more patients. Swedish had long offered myriad services in addition to inpatient care.
The various clinics and institutes associated with the hospital helped it remain viable in the coming decades when other area hospitals struggled financially. A article in The Seattle Times traced the transformation of First Hill -- by then often referred to as "Pill Hill" -- from a neighborhood filled with large homes, such as the Smith home that Swedish first occupied on Summit Avenue, to a "community of expanding institutions" Nelson.
Hemmed in by these other institutions, the hospital looked beyond First Hill for space to increase its facilities to encourage more doctors to send their patients to Swedish. In Swedish purchased Ballard Community Hospital.
Founded in Seattle Ballard neighborhood, Ballard Community Hospital was struggling financially because the aging population of Ballard led to an increased proportion of Medicare patients, with their relatively lower payments.
Ballard Community Hospital also contributed a long-established visiting nurse program, the CareUnit program for addiction treatment, an on-site MRI, and a sleep disorders clinic.
The merger was completed on July 1, A group of Ballard campus employees created the Sven and Ole characters that were featured in merger-related information sent to employees. Sven, a Swedish-named character, represented Swedish Hospital and Ole, a Norwegian-named character, represented Ballard Community Hospital because of Ballard's historically Scandinavian population. More than , babies have been born at Swedish Medical Center since the first was born in The hospital that started in an apartment building with 24 beds now serves more than 40, patients per year in more than a thousand beds, not including emergency room visits, which numbered some , in Johanson and his fellow Swedish Americans laid a solid foundation for a hospital that has served Seattle for a century.
Raising Funds Raising funds for a hospital building took two years. According to Nordstrom, "The Swedes living in the Pacific Northwest were grateful for the opportunities they had found in America Nurses and Their Training The nurses who staffed the hospital lived in an adjacent house. Recruiting and Training Dr. Growing Again In , the hospital expanded again with the addition of the bed Northeast Wing built at the corner of Summit Avenue and Marion Street. Johanson's Legacy Dr. A Busy Decade: the s In the six-story Johanson Wing expanded the hospital's capacity to beds and then to beds in when the second phase of the project was completed.
Merger and Further Affiliation In the s and s the Seattle area had seen tremendous grown, increasing in population from , to , Expanding Facilities, Expanding Care to the Uninsured In Swedish completed a Certificate of Need to add 32 beds, 27 for patients getting leukemia and aplastic anemia treatment, five for other patients.
Adapting to New Realities The s and s saw a tremendous physical expansion of Swedish Hospital. Ballard and Providence Join the Fold A article in The Seattle Times traced the transformation of First Hill -- by then often referred to as "Pill Hill" -- from a neighborhood filled with large homes, such as the Smith home that Swedish first occupied on Summit Avenue, to a "community of expanding institutions" Nelson.
Rockafeller and James W. C-1; Jennifer Ott interview with Dr. That spending contributed to financial problems at Swedish. Swedish blamed higher health-insurance deductibles and job market problems for the drop. And the merger might have occurred even if Swedish had not faced financial challenges. Medical organizations throughout the country are consolidating as they struggle to adapt to a changing health-care landscape.
The network will be available to self-insured companies and payers starting in Not all are convinced the cost savings will automatically follow.
The optimists say the Providence culture is known to be careful about controlling costs. And the alliance rolls forward just as crucial aspects of the federal Affordable Care Act ACA unfold, ensuring that millions of Americans without health care will receive at least some level of medical coverage, Nalty points out. The two organizations say they seek to serve large populations at a lower cost to accommodate the potential influx of patients from the insurance exchanges and Medicaid expansion under the ACA, which goes into effect in The first part of the cost savings has started, Providence and Swedish say, by the alignment of back-office administrative departments, legal, finance and IT systems as well as by standardizing supplies.
In addition, the alliance will lean on analytics and care management services to review claims data and performance report cards provided to participating clinicians. There have been no layoffs since the merger, but some tightening of staff through attrition.
Each system is a nonprofit operating as a separate brand under the new arrangement. These questions keep arising across the country because Catholic conglomerates are some of the largest hospital systems in the U.
Bellingham and other Washington cities saw similar service cessations following Catholic takeovers of secular hospitals. Already, 1 in 6 U. If the Virginia Mason merger goes through, four cities in the state — Bellingham, Centralia, Walla Walla and Yakima — will have only a Catholic hospital.
Seattle-based Virginia Mason said that, as part of the deal, it would work with CHI Franciscan to comply with the directives governing Catholic health care institutions. But it declined to offer specifics on what services the system would stop offering or make an executive available for an interview.
The U. Conference of Catholic Bishops' Ethical and Religious Directives forbid services such as abortion, contraception, tubal ligation and physician aid in dying for terminally ill patients.
Catholic providers differ over whether gender transition care is permitted, but Virginia Mason said its service offerings for LGBTQ patients would not change. Gary Kaplan, to discuss ways to maintain those services. It's the latest conflict to arise as more Catholic and non-Catholic hospital systems around the country consider merging, driven by the long-running consolidation in the health care industry and now by the economic collapse caused by the COVID pandemic.
Some of these efforts have been derailed by objections from regulators and advocacy groups to Catholic care restrictions. The Washington attorney general's office said it will review the proposed merger to ensure it doesn't lessen competition or harm state residents.
But advocacy groups don't expect the state to block the deal.
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