News

Rockford, IL, November 19, 2018—SwedishAmerican Hospital has selected Michael Albright as its 2018 recipient of The PHIL Award. This annual award is part of The FACES Foundation’s program to recognize exemplary respiratory care.

SwedishAmerican is pleased to welcome our new endocrine surgeon, Maria Bates, MD. Dr. Bates received her medical degree from Semmelweis University Faculty of Medicine in Budapest, Hungary and completed general surgery residency at Alpert Medical School of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. She completed her Endocrine Surgery Fellowship at University of Wisconsin-Madison.

SwedishAmerican officially broke ground today on its new state-of-the-art Edgewater Medical Center, located at 2909 N. Main Street in northwest Rockford.

SwedishAmerican welcomes three new members to its board to serve a five-year term; Dr. Tiffanie Ferry, Anqunette Parham and Elizabeth Bolt (UW Health member). Officers of the board, who will serve a two-year term, include Bill Roop, chair; Rev.

SwedishAmerican, the Rockford Police Department and the Rockford Fire Department are teaming up to host a free Trunk-or-Treat event on Monday, October 29 from 6 – 8 PM in the Rockford Public School District 205 Headquarters parking lot, 501 7th Street. Children and families are invited to wear their Halloween costumes early and trick-or-treat from the trunk of a police car, ambulance and fire truck.

Tammy Walker, SwedishAmerican Licensed Massage Therapist recently completed the highest and most rigorous course of study set forth by the National Certification Board for Therapeutic Massage and Bodywork, the Oncology Massage Specialty Certificate Program.

Walker completed 275 hours of hands-on training with oncology patients through the program. The program taught her how to demonstrate the necessary knowledge and skills to work safely and effectively with cancer patients.

Jedediah Cantrell, VP of Operations at SwedishAmerican a Division of UW Health in Rockford Illinois, received the American College of Healthcare Executives Senior-Level Healthcare Executive Regent’s Award on Friday, October 12, 2018 at the chapter’s fall conference in Normal Illinois.
 
The Senior-Level Healthcare Executive Regent’s Award recognizes ACHE members who are experienced in the field and have made significant contributions to the advancement of healthcare management excellence and the achievement of ACHE’s goals.
 

The SwedishAmerican Foundation and Fitzgerald Funeral Home & Crematory is pleased to co-sponsor A Walk to Remember, a memorial walk to remember children lost through miscarriage, stillbirth, infant and childhood death. The walk will take place on Sunday, October 7 at 1:00 p.m. at the YMCA Log Lodge Sinnissippi Bike Path, 200 Y Blvd. This is the 29th year the Foundation and Fitzgerald have partnered together on the event.

A shiny Mary Kay Pink Cadillac driven by Tandy Fischer, Mary Kay Senior Cadillac Sales Director, arrived at SwedishAmerican’s Regional Cancer Center on Wednesday, September 26 to deliver over 200 care packages to oncology patients.
 
Tandy Fischer began her partnership with SwedishAmerican in June 2018 after she was contacted by a friend asking for a product that would help soothe and comfort the burns on her skin following a radiation treatment. She called for donations via her personal Facebook page, leading to an overwhelming response from the community.

On Thursday, September 20, at 2:00pm, Aramark and SwedishAmerican, a division of UW Health, will gather employees together at SwedishAmerican’s main campus, 1401 E. State Street, to fill 200 backpacks with school supplies and then deliver them to Remedies Domestic Violence shelter. This is the third year Aramark has partnered with SwedishAmerican to provide backpacks to children staying at Remedies.

The SwedishAmerican Regional Cancer Center, developed in collaboration with UW Health and its nationally recognized University of Wisconsin Carbone Cancer Center, is pleased to announce the celebration of its fifth anniversary. Throughout the week of October 1, the center will celebrate its anniversary with a variety of festive activities and celebrations for patients, their families and staff.

SwedishAmerican is kicking off a new Boy Scouts Explorer Program for local high school students on Tuesday, October 9 at 6:30 PM at SwedishAmerican Hospital, 1401 E. State Street, Rockford. The Explorer Program is a career education program offered by Irving, Tex.-based Learning for Life, a subsidiary of the Boy Scouts of America. Participants are young men and women who are at least 14 (and have completed 8th grade) and not yet 21 years old.

SwedishAmerican and Rockford Fire Department are excited to announce it will open a Little Free Library on Rockford Fire Station 3 campus, 888 Marchesano Drive, Rockford. The ambulance themed Little Free Library will be located directly across from SwedishAmerican’s new Riverwest Clinic which is currently under construction and scheduled to open this fall, offering primary care, obstetrics, lab and imaging services. Stenstrom Construction is building the new facility and is donating the Little Free Library.

Construction on the 70,000-square-foot SwedishAmerican Creekside Medical Center is currently underway and today marked an important milestone – its topping out ceremony.

SwedishAmerican is pleased to welcome its new endocrinologist, Amrutha George, MD. Dr. George has a special interest in thyroid cancer and hyperthyroidism, along with Fine Needle Aspiration Biopsy of thyroid nodules. She is board certified in internal medicine and endocrinology, diabetes & metabolism. Dr. George is a member of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists and the Endocrinology society.

More than 23 million children and teenagers in the United States between the ages of two and 19 are obese or overweight. To help combat this problem, SwedishAmerican’s Ryan Jury Child Development Learning Center is hosting a FREE health fair on Saturday, September 15, in conjunction with National Childhood Obesity Awareness Month. The event will take place from 11 AM to 2 PM at the UW Health Sports Factory, 305 S. Madison Street, Rockford. 

After three years of preparation in collaboration with University of Wisconsin Health, SwedishAmerican launched Epic, the most widely-used and comprehensive health records system, on July 1. Epic replaced SwedishAmerican’s previous medical records software from GE.

With the launch of Epic, each patient seen at a UW or SwedishAmerican site has one, integrated record across the system. The switch will streamline services, such as scheduling, clinical applications, billing, and population health initiatives.

SwedishAmerican Medical Group/Belvidere (SAMC/B) is excited to announce that it has opened a Little Free Library on its campus at 1625 South State Street in Belvidere. Little Free Libraries are an international movement where people place small, weather proof boxes in their communities. These libraries are stocked with books which are free to the public to take and return. The hope is that when someone takes a book, they will return it or replace it with another book. There currently are over 36,000 Little Free Library book exchanges around the world.

As summer wind downs, the SwedishAmerican Regional Cancer Center invites you to attend The Healing Power of Nature event on Thursday, September 6 from 2:30 – 7:15 PM at, 3535 North Bell School Road, Rockford. The event offers a relaxing time of healing along with nature based activities. All programs and times are listed below:

• 2:30 – 3:30 PM - SwedishAmerican Integrative Medicine and Family Physician Dr. Srivani Sridhar will present a workshop on Healing Environments. FREE to all participants.

The 34th annual SwedishAmerican State Street Mile, held Saturday, August 4 in downtown Rockford, is pleased to announce winners of the school challenge. Winnebago High School was awarded with $1,000; Freeport Middle School was awarded with $750 and Maria Montessori School was awarded with $500. Each school had the most registered and most participating students, staff and faculty in this year’s State Street Mile.

SwedishAmerican is pleased to announce it has awarded 10 one-year $1,000 scholarships to children of SwedishAmerican associates. The Associates’ Children Scholarship Program is designed to assist children of SwedishAmerican associates pursue higher education. 

To be considered for the scholarship, each applicant submitted an application, written essay, ACT scores, class rank, official school transcript, completed applicant appraisal, a personal letter of recommendation and a copy of his or her letter of acceptance. 

SwedishAmerican, a division of UW Health, is expanding its excellence in health care by investing $60 Million to construct a new state-of-the art Women and Children’s Tower on its main hospital campus in downtown Rockford. Today, hundreds of SwedishAmerican associates, physicians, leadership, patients and children joined in on the celebration and officially broke ground on the new facility.

As SwedishAmerican continues to celebrate its modernization and campus expansion projects, area residents, hospital visitors and employees, today, took a peek at the past growth and evolution of SwedishAmerican’s services and facilities over the last century from inside The Dr. Henry C. and Dorothy Anderson Heritage Center Museum.

A ribbon-cutting and unveiling launched the new exhibit, “Growing with Rockford: The Evolution of SwedishAmerican Hospital,” which is a mix of large-format graphics, artifacts and interactive technology.

SwedishAmerican is pleased to announce it broke ground on its new state-of-the-art Special Procedures Catheterization Laboratory (Cath Lab) expansion, a facility used to perform interventional cardiology, interventional radiology, and peripheral vascular procedures. Interventional cardiology procedures include stenting and balloon angioplasty, diagnosis and treatment of heart arrhythmias, and more. Interventional radiology and peripheral vascular procedures focus on diagnosing and intervening on vasculature other than the heart.