By John Wolcott
Herald Business Journal Editor

The Mother’s Day opening of Providence Everett Medical Center’s new, five-story, 152,000-square-foot Pavilion for Women and Children on its Pacific Avenue Campus marks a new era of health care for families in a five-county region.

While the Pavilion is primarily devoted to serving Snohomish County, it will also attract people from Skagit, Whatcom, Island and San Juan counties who need more advanced services than their local hospitals and clinics can provide.

The facility’s increased levels of maternity and pediatric services, breast care and other medical needs mean Northwestern Washington patients no longer have to battle gridlocked traffic to Seattle or Bellevue to find the latest in medical care, said Gail Larson, Chief Executive for Providence Everett Medical Center.

Services at the Pavilion for Women and Children include:

• A 40-room Family Maternity Center, designed for one-patient-to-a-room with family-centered care in mind, and equipped to handle as many as 4,500 deliveries annually, up dramatically from the hospital’s present level of 3,200.
• A Level III Newborn Intensive Care Unit, operated in collaboration with Children’s Hospital in Seattle, providing help for premature or seriously ill babies.
• Perinatal services provided in collaboration with the University of Washington Medical Center, including consultations with genetic counseling specialists.
• Providence Children’s Center, which serves children born with medical conditions that affect growth and development, or those facing problems stemming from illness or injury.
• An inpatient Pediatric Unit, which treats everything from broken bones to major illnesses.
• Outpatient pediatric subspecialty services at Children’s Everett, a program of Children’s Hospital in Seattle.
• Medical offices for patients of Providence’s Medalia Medical Group and The Everett Clinic.
• A Family Resource Center, providing health-care education resources, from books and pamphlets to videos, unique health-care products and access to the Internet for research.
• A Comprehensive Breast Center for screening, diagnosis and treatment is a new, advanced health-care service for Snohomish County, operated in partnership with local physicians. The center has one of the nation’s first three-dimensional diagnostic breast imaging devices, plus a staff trained to focus on patients’ needs for information, consultation and treatment.

One of the Pavilion’s most frequently used services, however, will be for maternity care. A prime example of the value of Providence Everett Medical Center’s new Pavilion services is the story of the DuRuz family of Everett. Even though the late-March arrival of Cyndi and Jerry DuRuz’s triplet boys — Holden, Hunter and Payton — came before the opening of the new center, the medical center’s collaborative links with Children’s Hospital in Seattle and the University of Washington Medical Center began paying off early.

All three of the boys, born four weeks early and weighing between four and five pounds, would usually have been cared for at the University of Washington Medical Center. But in January, Providence Everett Medical Center was certified for caring for babies needing ventilators and special treatment.

Also, through its relationship with Children’s Hospital, Providence Everett had neonatal nurse practitioners on duty 24 hours a day and University of Washington physicians spending time daily in Everett. The presence of the Pavilion for Women and Children will make that kind of specialty care available in Snohomish County for the first time, along with many other first-time care services.

But the Pavilion isn’t just for special needs or high-tech services. It will also be used for regular medical visits for patients of Providence’s Medalia Medical Group, The Everett Clinic, Providence’s pediatrics center and the facility’s information resource center.

Nearly four years in the planning, the $56 million Pavilion for Women and Children is one of the largest projects ever completed by Providence Everett Medical Center, financed in great part by community response to the Providence General Foundation’s capital campaign, “Sharing the Vision.”

Major participants in the project included Everett-based Newland Construction Co. Inc., Kirtley-Cole Associates Inc. of Snohomish and Lease Crutcher Lewis of Seattle; Seattle architects NBBJ and Anshen+Allen Pacific, and Everett’s Botesch Nash & Hall Architects, plus CDI Mechanical Engineers and Sparling, an electrical engineering and design firm, both of Lynnwood. More than 70 other companies were also involved, including more than 25 Snohomish County businesses.

Providence Everett Medical Center’s investment in the Pavilion is part of a continually evolving 20-year Master Site Plan, designed to meet future demands for quality, state-of-the-art health-care services for a growing Snohomish County population. According to the 2000 Census, the number of county residents increased from 265,236 in 1970 to 465,628 in the 20 years ending in 1990, expanding to 606,024 in 2000 — an increase of 340,788 people over the past three decades.

Providing needed health-care services has been a 150-year tradition in the Pacific Northwest for the Sisters of Providence.

In 1905, the order bought Everett’s Monte Cristo Hotel for $50,000 to establish Providence Hospital with 75 beds and a staff of 11 Sisters and three employees. In 1923, a $200,000 hospital with 126 beds was added east of the hotel site.

By 1962, the hospital’s facilities were inadequate, spurring a $14.5 million reconstruction project and a new service wing for obstetrics, radiology and dietary services.

After its 1994 merger with Everett’s first hospital — Everett General — the two health-care centers became Providence General Medical Center, part of the Sisters of Providence Health Systems, then changed its name to Providence Everett Medical Center in 2000.

Today, the medical center also operates a Mill Creek campus of health-care services for south Snohomish County and nine offices in the Medalia Medical Group, a network of clinics staffed by more than 60 primary-care providers, including physicians.

With the opening of the Pavilion for Women and Children will also come the expansion of PEMC ‘s inpatient bed capacity at the Colby Campus, in space vacated by services moving to the Pavilion. The expansion over the next 24 months will include 15 new single-stay cardiac surgery critical care beds and more than 60 additional telemetry beds to serve the needs of the growing community and the physicians who work here.

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