The John H. Stroger Jr. Hospital of Cook County (formerly Cook County Hospital) is a

public hospital A public hospital, or government hospital, is a hospital which is government owned and is fully funded by the government and operates solely off the money that is collected from taxpayers to fund healthcare initiatives. In some countries, this typ ...

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

, Illinois, United States. It is part of the

Cook County Health and Hospital System The John H. Stroger Jr. Hospital of Cook County (formerly Cook County Hospital) is a public hospital in Chicago, Illinois, United States. It is part of the Cook County Health and Hospital System, along with Provident Hospital of Cook County and ...

, along with Provident Hospital of Cook County and several related centers, which provides public primary, specialty, and tertiary healthcare services to residents of

Cook County, Illinois Cook County is the most populous county in the U.S. state of Illinois and the second-most-populous county in the United States, after Los Angeles County, California. More than 40% of all residents of Illinois live within Cook County. As of 2 ...

. Cook County Hospital was founded 1832, and became an innovative

teaching hospital A teaching hospital is a hospital or medical centre that provides medical education and training to future and current health professionals. Teaching hospitals are almost always affiliated with one or more universities and are often co-located ...

. In 2001-2002, it moved into new quarters adjacent to its historic Beaux-Arts complex in the

Illinois Medical District The Illinois Medical District (IMD) is a special-use zoning district two miles west of the Loop in Chicago, Illinois. The Illinois Medical District consists of 560 acres of medical research facilities, labs, a biotechnology business incubator ...

and was renamed for hospital board president John Stroger Jr.

Facility and location

Stroger employs 300 attending physicians and over 400 fellows and residents. It has of floor space, and 464 beds. It is located at 1901 W. Harrison Street, and is a part of the 305 acre (1.2 km²)

on Chicago's West Side, which is one of the largest concentrations of medical facilities in the world.

History

Cook County Hospital, which opened in 1857, was used as a teaching hospital by Rush Medical School until the Civil War, when it was transitioned to an army hospital. After the war, it continued its purpose as a center for medical education and founded the first medical internship in the country in 1866. By the 1900s, the hospital was overseen by surgeons and physicians in Chicago who volunteered their services at the hospital, which was rebuilt in 1916. Regarded as one of the world's greatest teaching hospitals, many interns, residents, and graduate physicians came to see the medical and surgical advances. Innovations included the world's first blood bank and surgical fixation of fractures. In the 1930s, Dr.

Bernard Fantus Bernard Fantus (September 1, 1874 – April 14, 1940) was a Hungarian Jewish-American physician. He established the first hospital blood bank in the United States in 1937 at Cook County Hospital, Chicago while he served there as director of the ph ...

, after finding ways to lengthen the preservation of blood outside the body, invented and opened the world's first

Blood Bank A blood bank is a center where blood gathered as a result of blood donation is stored and preserved for later use in blood transfusion. The term "blood bank" typically refers to a department of a hospital usually within a Clinical Pathology laborat ...

, the "Cook County Hospital Blood Bank." In the early 1960s, William Shoemaker, a student of the famed surgical physiologist, Francis Daniels Moore, spearheaded surgical critical care when he organized the first Burn and Trauma Unit. In 1986, Agnes D. Lattimer was appointed medical director of Cook County Hospital, making her the first African American woman to serve as medical director of a major American hospital. Cook County Hospital was renamed for

John H. Stroger, Jr. John is a common English name and surname: * John (given name) * John (surname) John may also refer to: New Testament Works * Gospel of John, a title often shortened to John * First Epistle of John, often shortened to 1 John * Second ...

, the then-president of the Cook County Board, in 2001. The new Cook County (Stroger) Hospital was opened in December 2002, and is housed in a facility located adjacent to the old hospital building. The former Cook County Hospital building was renovated and reopened as a privately funded mixed use development, and

Hyatt Hotel Hyatt Hotels Corporation, commonly known as Hyatt Hotels & Resorts, is an American multinational hospitality company headquartered in the Riverside Plaza area of Chicago that manages and franchises luxury and business hotels, resorts, and vacat ...

In popular culture

''County General Hospital'', a fictional hospital that served as the setting for the

NBC The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters are l ...

serial medical drama '' ER'', was loosely based on Cook County Hospital; in the first episode a patient refers to the hospital as "Cook County General" during a cognitive test. Cook County Hospital is also used in the 1993 movie '' The Fugitive''. The documentary ''I Call It Murder'' aired on the BBC television show '' Man Alive'' in 1979, which reported on the challenges facing the staff at Cook County Hospital. At that time, the hospital was one of the few free hospitals in the United States. In 1996, Diana, Princess of Wales visited patients and doctors in the AIDS ward and trauma center, while on a tour of Chicago.

References

External links

* {{authority control Hospital Hospitals in Chicago 1834 establishments in Illinois Public hospitals in the United States