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Published April 2005
Providence
celebrates
century of health care
By
John Wolcott
SCBJ Editor
A century ago, on March 1, 1905, the Sisters of Providence opened the city’s first hospital on Rucker Hill, after buying and converting the city’s former Monte Cristo hotel. The nuns’ $50,000 purchase of the hotel has evolved into a multimillion-dollar health-care complex on two campuses in Everett that serves a five-county region.
“The first hospital opened with 75 beds, staffed by 11 Sisters of Providence and three nonreligious employees. In its first year, they served 435 patients in the hospital,” Providence Everett Medical Center’s chief executive officer, Gail Larson, told the crowd of hospital employees and residents gathered at the Pacific Avenue campus in March. Today, the hospital has 2,860 employees and admitted 21,876 patients in 2004.
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Everett OKs hospital expansion plan Providence Everett Medical Center’s plans for launching a $400 million, 15- to 20-year renovation and expansion of its Colby Avenue site won approval in March by a 5-1 vote of the Everett City Council after a nearly five-hour public meeting. In answer to efforts by residents of the adjacent Donovan District of historic homes, the council required the hospital to forego demolishing any of the 21 homes it needs to clear for its expansion until Jan. 1, 2006. The hospital owns all but one of the homes, which account for about one-quarter of the 80 homes in the Donovan neighborhood, but the remainder of 2005 has been set aside to allow time for the hospital to pursue plans to move many of the homes rather than raze them. Providence has planned its expansion for the past 10 years to keep up with the health-care needs of Snohomish County’s population, which is expected to grow by more than 50 percent by 2025. Most of Providence’s inpatient services are provided at the Colby Avenue Campus, including its heart institute, vascular institute and trauma center. Its Pacific Avenue Campus has outpatient and women and children’s services. Major elements of the master plan include new buildings to replace current structures built in 1924, 1949, 1958 and 1966; two new bed towers, increasing total beds from 362 to 550; an increase in employment from 2,433 to 4,633, with an average annual salary of $58,000; two new parking garages that would increase spaces from 809 to 1,800; and a new cancer care center to be built just north of the present medical center, in conjunction with The Everett Clinic. —
John Wolcott, |
“We have a great heritage … from the Sisters of Providence,” Larson, said, reminding her audience that the lumbering and mining town of Everett, incorporated in 1893, had no hospital until the Sisters of Providence established their health-care facility.
Following celebrations at the Pacific and Colby Avenue campuses of Providence Everett Medical Center, guests gathered to view the contents of “time capsule” memorabilia displayed in three large, glass-covered cases.
The contents, added over the years at significant milestones in the hospital’s history, included a 1915 prayer book in French, used by the first Sisters of Providence who came to the Washington Territory from Montreal, Quebec; photos of the Monte Cristo hotel; historic newspapers; and other keepsakes. Many items were added, too, when a new 126-bed hospital was built east of the Monte Cristo, on the present Pacific Campus site, and more were added during the 1962-74 expansion of the hospital.
Proclamations and congratulations for the hospital’s centennial came from the Vatican, President George W. Bush, Washington state Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, U.S. Rep. Rick Larsen, Snohomish County Executive Aaron Reardon, Everett Mayor Ray Stephanson and others.
Looking back at the events of the past 100 years, Providence officials talked about the building of the new 126-bed hospital on today’s Pacific Campus site for $300,000, followed by the demolishing of the former Monte Cristo in 1924, and the four-phase expansion of the 1923 hospital for $14.5 million in the 1960s, ending in 1974 when the front portion of today’s hospital was finished on that site.
In 1994, Providence Hospital merged with the private Everett General Hospital, forming Providence General Medical Center, which became Providence Everett Medical Center in 2000. In 2002, Providence opened the $56 million Pavilion for Women and Children on the Pacific Campus.
Now, the Sisters of Providence have announced plans for a $400 million expansion of the Colby Avenue Campus to meet the demand for services into the next century.
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© 2005 The Daily Herald Co., Everett, WA