| Parkland Memorial Hospital | |
| Geography | |
|---|---|
| Location | Dallas, Texas, United States |
| Organization | |
| Care system | Public |
| Hospital type | General and Teaching |
| Affiliated university | UT-Southwestern Medical Center |
| Services | |
| Emergency department | Level I trauma center |
| Beds | 968 |
| History | |
| Founded | 1894 |
| Links | |
| Website | http://www.parklandhospital.com/ |
| Lists | Hospitals in Texas |
Parkland Memorial Hospital is a hospital located at 5201 Harry Hines Boulevard, just west of Oak Lawn in Dallas, Texas (USA). It is the main hospital of the Dallas County Hospital District (dba Parkland Health and Hospital System) and serves as Dallas County's public hospital.
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The original hospital opened in 1894 in a wooden building on a 17-acre (69,000 m2) meadow located at Oak Lawn Avenue and Maple. The name Parkland came from the land on which the hospital was built, originally purchased by the city as a park.[1] A brick building (the first ever erected in Texas, now owned by the Trammell Crow Company) replaced the wooden facility in 1913.
In 1954, it moved to its current location, about a mile from the original site.
Parkland is best-known as the hospital where three individuals associated with the assassination of John F. Kennedy died: John F. Kennedy himself, his assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, and Jack Ruby, who killed Oswald.
After he was shot on Friday, November 22, 1963, President Kennedy was rushed to Parkland, where he was pronounced dead at 1 p.m. in Trauma Room 1. At the same time, Texas Governor John Connally, wounded in the same shooting, was being treated in Trauma Room 2.
Two days after the assassination, Oswald was rushed to Parkland after being shot in the abdomen by Ruby, and died in operating room #5 after over 90 minutes of surgery. Ruby died on January 3, 1967 in the same emergency room, from a pulmonary embolism associated with lung cancer.
Since Ruby's death in 1967, the emergency room has been remodeled and the area where Kennedy, Oswald, and Ruby died now serves as the hospital's emergency radiology department. A plaque commemorating their deaths has been placed in the room.
Parkland is the Dallas County public hospital; funds are primarily provided by a specially designated property tax on Dallas County residents.
Parkland serves as one of the area's three Level 1 Trauma centers (alongside Baylor University Medical Center, also in Dallas, and John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth), a primary care center for Dallas County residents, and (along with UT Southwestern) as a medical and surgical referral center for North Texas and parts of Southern Oklahoma. Thus, virtually all medical and surgical subspecialties are represented—which makes Parkland a destination for post-graduate medical training. Its Burns Unit is famous for the Parkland Formula for fluid resuscitation, developed by Charles R. Baxter in the 1960s.[2]
At 968 licensed beds, Parkland ranks among the largest teaching hospitals in the nation. Texas Woman's University began its Bachelor of Science nursing program at Parkland in 1954 and it is still located within walking distance of the Parkland campus. Parkland also serves as the major teaching hospital of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.
It has the distinction of delivering more infants under one roof than any other hospital in the nation, averaging 15-16,000 deliveries per year. Parkland Memorial has nine prenatal clinics and employs 72 doctors training to become obstetricians-gynecologists and 45 nurse-midwives. In 2005, the staff delivered 15,590 babies, an average of more than 42 infants per day.[3] Parkland created one of the first high-risk antenatal units in the nation and had the first neonatal intensive care unit in North Texas.
Parkland is also the base for Biotel, the medical direction system used by Dallas Fire-Rescue and most of the other fire departments in Dallas County.
Since Parkland is a public hospital, it accepts patients from Dallas County regardless of their ability to pay. As such, uninsured residents from surrounding counties that do not have public hospitals of their own (and which are not subject to the special property tax used for Parkland operations) regularly seek treatment at Parkland. These surrounding counties actually transport indigent and uninsured patients to Parkland in county owned ambulances and drop them off. This has caused financial turmoil for the hospital in recent years, as the surrounding counties are not required by law to reimburse Parkland for services provided to their residents (though some of them have on rare occasions done so). Also, Parkland does not request information on a patient's legal status.
The large volume of patients seen at Parkland, along with its overcrowded 50+-year-old facility (hospital beds can regularly be seen in the hallways), led the Dallas County Commissioners Court to propose replacing the building with a new 1,700,000-square-foot (160,000 m2), 862-bed facility, along with a new 380,000-square-foot (35,000 m2) outpatient center, a 275,000-square-foot (25,500 m2) office facility, and parking for 6,000 cars. The total cost would be $1.27 billion, to be paid for through three avenues: 1) a $747 million bond proposition (contingent on voter approval, which was obtained in November 2008), 2) $350 million of cash from current and future operations, and 3) $150 million from private donations.[4]
The board approved nearly $100 million in contracts and hired two architectural firms – HDR Architecture (based in Omaha, Nebraska, but operates a large practice in Dallas) and Corgan Associates Inc. (based in Dallas) – to design the new building. The hospital is set to be completed in 2014. In addition to Dallas County tax payers funding the public hospital, large private donations were made as well.[5]
Annette and Harold Simmons and their family contributed a $50 million challenge grant that was contingent on the Parkland Foundation raising $100 million for the project over the next five years.
The foundation of Jan and Trevor Rees-Jones pledged an additional $25 million, contingent on the passage of the proposition in Dallas County on election day. Trevor Rees-Jones is the President and CEO of Chief Oil and Gas, based out of Dallas, Texas. The Rees-Jones Foundation[1] was created in 2006 to provide support and funding for programs that will help improve the quality of life for the underserved people of North Texas.
Mr. Rees-Jones said, "We're interested in helping folks who are less fortunate than others and who are suffering in various ways. Without Parkland, these people would be distributed to hospitals throughout the area." He also went on to say, "They rebuild a hospital like this every 60 years or so. I saw this as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to participate in the creation of a new Parkland."[6]
Other major contributions include: