Northwestern Lake Forest Hospital (NLFH) is a community-based hospital in Lake Forest, Illinois and a wholly owned subsidiary of Northwestern Memorial HealthCare, one of the nation's premiere academic medical centers. The hospital was established in 1899 as Alice Home on the campus of Lake Forest College, and in 1942 a new hospital was built in its current location as Lake Forest Hospital. On February 1, 2010, Lake Forest Hospital completed an affiliation agreement with Northwestern Memorial HealthCare and became Northwestern Lake Forest Hospital.
The 201-bed hospital is on a campus in Lake Forest and provides a comprehensive array of inpatient and outpatient medical and surgical services. At the main campus in Lake Forest, services include an inpatient hospital, a women's center providing maternity and breast care services, a health and fitness center and a nursing care facility. The hospital has 700 board-certified physicians specializing in 90 specialties on its medical staff.
Northwestern Lake Forest Hospital is a partner of Lurie Children's Hospital in Chicago, one of the nation's top-ranked children's hospitals. Lurie Children's Outpatient Center and Lurie Children's hospitalists and neonatologists provide infant and pediatric care 24 hours a day to patients at Northwestern Lake Forest Hospital.
History
Alice Home
In 1882, no hospital existed in Lake Forest, Illinois, a small town best known as a summer getaway for Chicago residents. Dr. Alfred C. Haven, a recent newcomer to the town, was Lake Forest's only physician, and the closest hospital was located in Waukegan, Illinois. With the assistance of James G.K. McClure, Lake Forest University (later known as Lake Forest College) President and First Presbyterian Church Pastor, Dr. Haven raised both financial backing and public support for a hospital on the Lake Forest University campus. In 1889, Alice Home opened as the community hospital.
In 1908, Alice Home expanded by building Contagious Hospital, an isolating, separate hospital to care for patients affected by outbreaks of tuberculosis, scarlet fever, typhoid, measles, mumps, diphtheria and whooping cough. In 1918, the Hospital Association of Lake Forest was certified as a legally organized not-for-profit organization, independent of Lake Forest College. In 1921, this association, along with the City of Lake Forest, Lake Forest College, and Alice Home and Contagious Hospital trustees, agreed to consolidate Alice Home and Contagious Hospital into one entity.
Lake Forest Hospital
By 1940, Lake Forest had radically changed from a summer destination to a year-round, permanent residence for many families. The significant increase in population strained Alice Home's resources. Between 1939 and 1940, the clinical staff at Alice Home managed more than 600 operations, 2,000 outpatients and 3,000 lab tests. Without the ability to expand further onto the college campus, community members and hospital staff began considering the establishment of a new, larger institution to meet these growing needs. Mrs. Mary Dick, wife of the late Albert Blake Dick Sr., lived alone on the Westmoreland Farm (named after the family's origins in Westmoreland, Pennsylvania) in Lake Forest, Illinois. In 1940, A.B. Dick Jr., her son, successfully convinced his mother that 23 acres of the family farmland ought to be donated for the new hospital. The road leading to the hospital was renamed Westmoreland Road in honor of the Dick family's generosity. Despite war rations, 300 individuals donated $800,000 for the construction of the hospital, including John G. Shedd and the McCormick families, and Lake Forest Hospital opened on November 1, 1942. By 1959, Lake Forest Hospital expanded from 65 to 101 beds and incorporated a hospital pharmacy. Two new wings were added at the west end of the hospital in 1967.