$4.4 million donation goes toward Kootenai Health hospital addition

The lobby of Kootenai Health’s new east addition will be dedicated in honor of a philanthropist and former North Idaho resident who donated $4.4 million to the hospital’s foundation.

Douglas Hugh McCall, who worked in the oil industry and died in 2004, left the money to the Kootenai Health Foundation, which received the gift in 2010 and 2011 after the death of McCall’s second wife. He suggested the foundation invest the funds in something big to benefit health care in the area.

In announcing the gift and its intended purpose for the first time, Mike Chapman, Kootenai Health Foundation board chairman, said, “This major gift may be the largest single private donation in our community’s history.”

The money is part of $7.8 million the foundation has raised for Kootenai Health’s $57 million expansion, which will begin receiving patients in mid-March. Construction on the three-story expansion began in August 2014 in Coeur d’Alene.

The 100,000-square-foot addition houses a new family birth center, neonatal intensive care unit, lobby and registration area. It also has a 32-bed orthopedic patient care unit and neurosurgery on the second floor, giving the hospital a 10 percent net increase in beds. The third floor will remain unfinished and available for another 32-bed unit down the road.

Jon Ness, CEO of Kootenai Health, said in a statement, “A gift of this magnitude allows us to develop a facility that includes state-of-the-art equipment, spaces that have been beautifully designed with patients’ comfort in mind, and a convenience northern Idaho patients and families deserve.”

McCall, a University of Washington graduate who split his time between Hayden Lake and Indian Wells, California, in 1987 made the first of many donations to the Kootenai Health Foundation to build the Cancer Center in honor of his first wife, who died from cancer. He also supported Kootenai’s Health Resource Center and the Heart Center. His name can be found on donor walls within various buildings around the hospital campus.

He was an avid golfer and 30-year member of the Hayden Lake Country Club. McCall died May 23, 2004, at age 95. He had no children.

The hospital expansion is being funded from cash reserves and financed through debt, in addition to donations. The foundation hopes to raise $10 million for the current hospital expansion.

Other major donations to the project include:

$1 million from former Hayden Mayor Ron McIntire and his wife, Joanne McIntire, for women’s and children’s services. The new unit will be named the Kootenai Health McIntire Family Birth Center.

$300,000 from Kootenai Imaging, a local radiology group, to support the private employee garden.

$100,000 from John “Jack” Yuditsky, his wife, Helen, and their son and daughter-in-law, Robert and Mary Kay Yuditsky, for the Family Birth Center waiting area.

$100,000 from Mountain West Bank – the largest contribution the bank has ever made.