Seattle - Harborview Hospital from Pioneer Square neighborhood

The city of

Seattle, Washington Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest region ...

, United States is served by numerous respected medical institutions. The

University of Washington The University of Washington (UW, simply Washington, or informally U-Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1861, Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast; it was established in Seattl ...

is consistently ranked among the country's dozen leading institutions in medical research, while

Group Health Cooperative Group Health Cooperative, (formerly known as Group Health Cooperative of Puget Sound), later more commonly known as Group Health, was a Seattle, Washington based nonprofit healthcare organization. Business model Established in , Group Health prov ...

was one of the pioneers of managed care in the United States. Seattle was a pioneer in the development of modern

paramedic A paramedic is a registered healthcare professional who works autonomously across a range of health and care settings and may specialise in clinical practice, as well as in education, leadership, and research. Not all ambulance personnel are p ...

services with the establishment of

Medic One The Seattle & King County Emergency Medical Services System is a fire-based two-tier response system providing prehospital basic and advanced life support services. There are six paramedic provider programs in the system. The Seattle Fire Departm ...

in 1970. Seattle Children's Hospital in the Laurelhurst neighborhood is the pediatric referral center for Washington,

Alaska Alaska ( ; russian: Аляска, Alyaska; ale, Alax̂sxax̂; ; ems, Alas'kaaq; Yup'ik: ''Alaskaq''; tli, Anáaski) is a state located in the Western United States on the northwest extremity of North America. A semi-exclave of the U.S. ...

Montana Montana () is a state in the Mountain West division of the Western United States. It is bordered by Idaho to the west, North Dakota and South Dakota to the east, Wyoming to the south, and the Canadian provinces of Alberta, British Columb ...

, and

Idaho Idaho ( ) is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. To the north, it shares a small portion of the Canada–United States border with the province of British Columbia. It borders the states of Montana and Wyomi ...

Harborview Medical Center Harborview Medical Center is a public hospital located in the First Hill neighborhood of Seattle, Washington, United States. It is managed by UW Medicine. Overview Harborview Medical Center is the designated Disaster Control Hospital for Seat ...

, the public county hospital located on

First Hill First Hill is a neighborhood in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is named for the hill on which it is located, which in turn is so named for being the first hill encountered while traveling east from downtown Seattle toward Lake Washing ...

, is the only Level I trauma hospital serving those four states. Harborview,

Northwest Hospital and Medical Center UW Medical Center - Northwest (formerly Northwest Hospital & Medical Center) is a 281-bed hospital in Seattle, Washington. It was built in 1960 and became part of the UW Medicine system in 2010.Kyung M. Songhttp://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/loc ...

in Haller Lake, and the

University of Washington Medical Center The University of Washington Medical Center (UWMC) is a hospital in the University District of Seattle, Washington. It is one of the teaching hospitals affiliated with the University of Washington School of Medicine.And is located in the War ...

are closely connected, with one physician group (UW Physicians) serving both hospitals. In addition, most Seattle Children's physicians hold faculty appointments at the

University of Washington School of Medicine The University of Washington School of Medicine (UWSOM) is a large public medical school in the northwest United States, located in Seattle and affiliated with the University of Washington. According to ''U.S. News & World Report''s 2022 Best Grad ...

and are employed by the Children's University Medical Group practice plan. Other hospitals in the community include

Swedish Medical Center Swedish Health Services, formerly Swedish Medical Center, is the largest nonprofit health provider in the Seattle metropolitan area. It operates five hospital campuses (in the Seattle neighborhoods of First Hill, Cherry Hill and Ballard, and th ...

/ Ballard (formerly Ballard General Hospital), Swedish Medical Center/ Cherry Hill (formerly Providence Seattle Medical Center), and Swedish Medical Center/First Hill (Swedish's original location), as well as

Virginia Mason Hospital Virginia Mason Hospital is a 336-bed teaching hospital in Seattle, Washington, part of the Virginia Mason Medical Center. The hospital is accredited by the Joint Commission and the Commission on Accreditation of Rehabilitation Facilities (CARF). F ...

on First Hill; the Seattle Division of the

Department of Veterans Affairs The United States Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is a Cabinet-level executive branch department of the federal government charged with providing life-long healthcare services to eligible military veterans at the 170 VA medical centers an ...

' Puget Sound Health Care System on Beacon Hill; the

Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center The Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, formerly known as the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and also known as Fred Hutch or The Hutch, is a cancer research institute established in 1975 in Seattle, Washington. History The center grew out o ...

in Cascade; and

Kaiser Permanente Kaiser Permanente (; KP), commonly known simply as Kaiser, is an American integrated managed care consortium, based in Oakland, California, United States, founded in 1945 by industrialist Henry J. Kaiser and physician Sidney Garfield. Kaiser ...

's Capitol Hill campus (outpatient only, formerly Group Health Central Hospital and Family Health Center). First Hill is widely known as "Pill Hill" for its high concentration of hospitals and other medical offices. In addition to being the home of Harborview, Swedish, and Virginia Mason, it is also the former location of Maynard, Seattle General, and Doctors Hospitals (all of which were merged into Swedish) and Cabrini Hospital. In 1974, a '' 60 Minutes'' story on the success of the Medic One paramedic system called Seattle "the best place in the world to have a

heart attack A myocardial infarction (MI), commonly known as a heart attack, occurs when blood flow decreases or stops to the coronary artery of the heart, causing damage to the heart muscle. The most common symptom is chest pain or discomfort which ma ...

." Some accounts report that Puyallup, a city south of Seattle, was the first place west of the

Mississippi River The Mississippi River is the second-longest river and chief river of the second-largest drainage system in North America, second only to the Hudson Bay drainage system. From its traditional source of Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota, it fl ...

to have

911 911 or 9/11 may refer to: Dates * AD 911 * 911 BC * September 11 ** 9/11, the September 11 attacks of 2001 ** 11 de Septiembre, Chilean coup d'état in 1973 that outed the democratically elected Salvador Allende * November 9 Numbers * 91 ...

emergency telephone service.

See also