Ketchikan General Hospital

3100 Tongass Avenue
Ketchikan, Alaska 99901
Phone: 907.934.9999
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Located in the Southeast Alaska Region, Ketchikan General Hospital is an accredited acute and long-term care facility that provides a wide variety of services including: comprehensive trauma, inpatient, outpatient, and home health services as well as a long-term care facility, 24-hour emergency medical staff and emergency physician, up-to-date technology and medical equipment, physical and occupational therapy, an accredited cancer care program, diabetes education, and a phase II cardiac rehabilitation program.

Ketchikan 's inpatient facility houses 46 beds, and the long-term facility houses 46 beds as well. The hospital is a 39-bed hospital with 29 medical staff members. Ketchikan General Hospital Physician Services offers a long list of health care services for the entire Ketchikan community throughout several clinics. The services provided by the medical group's 11 physicians as well as other support staff include: anesthesia, general surgery, pathology, pediatric care, psychiatric services, sports medicine and orthopedics, and radiology.

Additionally, the KGH medical community has several EMT services as well as medi-flight service from the surrounding outer islands to Ketchikan . Ketchikan General Hospital contracts with several medi-vac companies to provide emergency airlifts to hospitals located in the Seattle area for major traumas such as head injuries and neck injuries.

Ketchikan General Hospital 's roots can be traced all the way back to 1923 when the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace opened the Little Flower Hospital in Ketchikan . In 1927, a small addition was made to the hospital, then a pediatric wing in 1941. In 1943, a mere two years after the pediatric wing made it's debut, work on a $100,000 expansion began, which included a 75-bed hospital. At the time, this was the largest privately owned hospital in Alaska.

For the next (nearly) 20 years, the Little Flower Hospital operated on a shoestring, and by 1960, the hospital was on its way out. The sisters, along with the citizens of Ketchikan, formed a hospital council and chose a new hospital site. With funds accumulated from a 1% sales tax, the city built a new hospital. The sisters agreed to lease the property from the city, and operated the hospital debt-free, providing all necessary charity care.

Ketchikan General Hospital made its' debut in 1963, and opened a long-term care wing roughly five years later in 1968. Today, The Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace continue to operate Ketchikan General Hospital under the same lease agreement approved by the Ketchikan city council in 1960.