Reopened hospital in Snoqualmie will offer many services
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Footsteps echo loudly along empty hallways. Rows of dark, vacant offices fill this sprawling hospital overlooking the town of Snoqualmie.
But the silence soon will be broken. After more than two years, Snoqualmie Regional Hospital will reopen March 1. Northwest Care Management, an assisted-living company based on Bainbridge Island, is leasing the building and will manage a range of services from acute and geriatric care to alternative medicine and assisted living. The hospital will be owned by King County Hospital District 4, which encompasses North Bend, Snoqualmie, Preston, Fall City and Carnation.
"With more than 15 years of operations, our company has experience in small-hospital management. And the Snoqualmie Valley has the demographics and has matured to the point that it can support this size hospital," said Tom Johnston, president of Northwest Care Management. The company manages 10 facilities in Washington, Oregon and Abbottsford, B.C.
District Superintendent Jeff Lyle said the district's goal has long been to develop an entire medical community on the 47-acre hospital site. During the course of negotiations with Northwest Call Management, that now looks possible, Lyle said.
Initially there will be six in-patient beds, while day surgery, obstetrics and full emergency services will be added by late next year, Lyle said.
"Jeanne's Place," an eight-bed geriatric behavioral-health unit named in honor of the late Snoqualmie Mayor Jeanne Hansen, will open in March. Hansen, who died on Jan. 3, was instrumental in establishing the hospital district in 1976 and served as a member of the hospital district board of directors.
The geriatric unit will test, evaluate and treat mental-health diseases for the aging, including such ailments as Alzheimer's disease. Construction of an 85-unit assisted-living facility will begin later this year. Ancillary medical offices will follow and in five or six years housing for independent seniors will be built.
The hospital also will offer alternative medicine by permitting licensed naturopathic, chiropractic practitioners and optometrists to practice at the hospital. "We are embracing the alternative-medicine community to address all patients' needs, and now we are looking for Native American healers. We are willing to be a greenhouse for this type of operation," Johnston said.
Snoqualmie Regional Hospital was opened as Nelems Memorial Hospital in 1948 in a cinder-block building on the outskirts of Snoqualmie on U.S. Highway 10. Bernice Nelems, a nurse at the former Weyerhaeuser company hospital in the old town of Snoqualmie Falls, named the facility in honor of her parents and sister.
She ran the remote 16-bed medical facility for more than 20 years before financial problems befell it.
Maxine Dovenberg, a lifelong resident of North Bend, said she is elated with the news of the hospital reopening. The 78-year-old woman's grandparents came to North Bend in 1887 when it was an outpost to Seattle.
"I can hardly wait; I'm so anxious for it. My three children were born at the old Nelems Hospital," said Dovenberg, who helped form an auxiliary unit when the Snoqualmie Valley Hospital first opened more than 20 years ago.
Dovenberg, who holds exercising sessions for folks at the Mount Si Senior Center, feels senior citizens will benefit greatly from the decision to reopen the hospital.
"It's important to have a place for things the hospital offers. Now there'll be a day when I'll have a place to live," she said.