Parkland Memorial Hospital

Parkland Memorial Hospital is a hospital located at 5201 Harry Hines Boulevard, just west of Oak Lawn in Dallas, Texas (USA).

History
The original hospital opened in 1894 on a 17-acre meadow located at Oak Lawn Avenue and Maple. The name Parkland came from the land on which the hospital was built, originally purchased by the city as a park. In 1954, it moved to its current location, about a mile from the original site.

Parkland is bast-known as the hospital where three individuals associated with the assassination of President John F. Kennedy died: Kennedy, his alleged assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, and Jack Ruby, the killer of Oswald. After he was shot on Friday, November 22, 1963, President Kennedy was rushed to Parkland Memorial Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 1 p.m in Trauma Room 1. At the same time, Texas Governor John Connally, wounded in the same shooting, was being treated in Trauma Room 2. Two days after the assassination, Oswald was rushed to Parkland after being shot by Ruby, and died in the same trauma room where Kennedy had died. Coincidentally, Ruby died of a pulmonary embolism at Parkland on January 3, 1967. Since 1963, the emergency room has been remodeled. However, a plaque marks the spot where President Kennedy died.

Capabilities
Parkland is the only publicly supported hospital in Dallas County; funds are primarily provided by a specially designated property tax on Dallas County residents. Parkland serves as one of the area's three Level 1 Trauma centers, operates one of a handful of burn units in the entire state (where the leading Burns resuscitation formula in use worldwide was developed), and is the major teaching hospital of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. Also, Parkland has the distinction of delivering more infants under one roof than any other hospital in the nation: averaging 15-16,000 deliveries per year. Parkland created one of the first high-risk antenatal units in the nation, and had the first neonatal intensive care unit in North Texas.

At 968 licensed beds, Parkland ranks among the largest teaching hospitals in the nation.

Parkland serves as both a primary care center for Dallas County residents, and as a medical and surgical referral center for North Texas and parts of Southern Oklahoma. Thus, virtually all medical and surgical subspecialties are represented—which makes Parkland a destination for post-graduate medical training.

Controversy
Since Parkland is a public hospital, it must accept patients from Dallas County regardless of their ability to pay. As such, poorer residents from surrounding counties that do not have public hospitals of their own (and which are not subject to the special property tax used for Parkland operations) regularly seek treatment at Parkland. This has caused financial turmoil for the hospital in recent years, as the surrounding counties are not required by law to reimburse Parkland for services provided to their residents (though some of them have occasionally done so). Also, Parkland does not request information on a patient's legal status (unlike John Peter Smith Hospital in Tarrant County, which does request this information).

Parkland Memorial has nine prenatal clinics and employs 72 doctors training to become obstetricians-gynecologists and 45 nurse-midwives. In 2005 the staff delivered 15,590 babies, an average of more than 42 infants per day.

A patient survey indicated 70% of the women who gave birth at Parkland in the first three months of 2006 were illegal immigrants. . The yearly tally for 2005 was "at least 56%".