Health
Big Sky Medical Center receives $500,000 gift
BOZEMAN HEALTH FOUNDATION
Bozeman Health Foundation, Yellowstone Club Community Foundation and the leadership of Bozeman Health Big Sky Medical Center in early March announced that Leonard Hill and his wife, Dr. Patricia Gordon, provided $500,000 to support Montana’s first new hospital to be opened in 40 years.
Their gift was made to a special fund established by YCCF and its members to support Big Sky Medical Center. In recognition of their generosity, the medical center has named its six-room emergency department in their honor. Hill and Gordon consider both Los Angeles and Big Sky to be their homes.
“Big Sky is a truly special community, unique in our world today,” Hill said. “In making this gift to Big Sky Medical Center, we’re supporting a great community asset that will strengthen the fabric of Big Sky as a whole, and that’s important to us today and into the future.”
“Len and I are not just visitors anymore,” said Gordon, who first came to Big Sky in 2004. “We’re part of the community and we feel the need to treat Big Sky like it is our home.”
As an active member of the Yellowstone Club, Gordon also reflected on the importance of looking after the wider welfare of Big Sky. “We’re an increasingly integrated community, no longer just an isolated island. Big Sky Medical Center is a symbol of what’s possible when we all come together around the need for great local healthcare.”
The gift from Hill and Gordon will support the Fund for Excellence and Innovation in Big Sky Patient Care. This fund will help the medical center’s leadership team to acquire new leading-edge equipment; train staff members in new techniques; and to more efficiently provide patients with new kinds of treatments and services that may not otherwise be available in southern Gallatin County.
Since opening on Dec. 12, Big Sky Medical Center has served more than 1,100 patients in its emergency department. The imaging center has done nearly 1,400 studies and has averaged 12.5 patients per day, with more than 100 patients served by its MRI. BSMC’s family practice clinic is seeing an average of more than 24 patients daily and its retail pharmacy has increased daily filled prescriptions by 100 percent over what it experienced in its Meadow Village location.
