Multnomah County Hospital records

Collection

Identifier: 2017-003

Staff Only

Scope and Contents

The collection contains patient records, administrative records, and intern class photographs. Patient records include a surgical records ledger, a patient cash book, and admission ledgers. Administrative records consist of staff meeting minutes, a cost reduction study with budget details, clinic attendance figures, outpatient clinic procedures, and certificates. The intern photographs span most of the university’s history, running from 1923 to 1970, with small gaps in the 1920s and 1930s and larger ones through most of the 1960s.

Dates

1923 - 1971

Creator

Multnomah County Hospital (Organization)

Conditions Governing Access

Some materials in this collection may be restricted due to the presence of protected health information (PHI) or other confidential information. Please contact Historical Collections & Archives for more details regarding access.

Conditions Governing Use

All original materials and digitized images are owned by OHSU Library. You may use these materials on a fair use basis only, in accordance with Title 17, Section 107 of U.S. copyright law. For other uses, please contact OHSU Historical Collections & Archives for permission to reproduce, publish, or otherwise distribute images or other materials on this website. We request that any reproduction of these images include an attribution to OHSU Historical Collections & Archives as the source of this material.

Historical note

The Multnomah County Hospital was built to serve the county’s poorest patients, and also to provide practical experience for physicians in training – residents, interns, and students from the nearby University of Oregon Medical School (UOMS). The hospital was a distant bureaucratic descendent of the first public health institution in Oregon, the famous asylum founded in 1858 by Dr. James Hawthorne. In 1867, Hawthorne received a state contract to care for the indigent sick as well as the mentally ill. In 1873, the indigent patients were moved to the new Pauper’s Farm on Canyon Road, where they were visited biweekly by the official Multnomah County Physician. By the 1910s, the Farm was in bad shape; the patients moved to new premises in Troutdale, and in 1923 indigent medical services moved up Marquam Hill to the new Multnomah County Hospital. Both the hospital and the medical school were eventually merged into UOMS.

Extent

1.8 Linear Feet

Language of Materials

English

Additional Description

Abstract

The Multnomah County Hospital was built to serve the county’s poorest patients, and also to provide practical experience for physicians in training – residents, interns, and students from the nearby University of Oregon Medical School. This collection contains patient records, administrative records, and intern class photographs.

Arrangement

This collection is organized into three series: "1. Patient records (RESTRICTED)," "II. Administrative records," and "III. Intern photographs."

Immediate Source of Acquisition

This collection comes from multiple transfers over more than a decade. Records from the Multnomah County Hospital have been found in multiple university offices and, as they are transferred to the archives, are now added to this one collection, rather than maintaining the disjointed effect of such transfers.