Dr. Lily JungHenson (left) and Anna Jung, 86, arrive at Swedish/Issaquah on June 30 so the chief of staff’s proud mother can visit her daughter’s new office. By Greg Farrar

Dr. Lily JungHenson built a national reputation as a multiple sclerosis expert as innovations in treatment transformed the disease from a death sentence to a more manageable condition.

The longtime neurologist chose the specialty due in part to the challenge as neurology and treatments evolve. Now, JungHenson is about to embark on another challenge as chief of staff at Swedish/Issaquah.

“I’m a big fan of Swedish. It’s evolved into a health-care system that really cares about patients. It’s not just lip service,” she said. “There are a lot of people in leadership positions who want to do the right thing and who are very motivated.”

JungHenson, a Mercer Island resident, is responsible for leading the 200-member medical staff. The chief of staff is responsible for procedures, such as credentialing — evaluating qualifications and practice history — for medical staff members, and ensuring physicians and other health-care professionals gel as a team. (The staff is expected to include about 200 physicians after the entire hospital comes online in November.)

Dr. John Milne, vice president of medical affairs for Swedish/Issaquah and the emergency and ambulatory care centers in Redmond and Mill Creek, said leaders chose JungHenson because she has exceptional people skills.

“Lily, from my perspective, is a passionate, dynamic leader, and is really someone who has the ability to engage, inspire and energize staff,” he said.

The modern hospital, much like MS treatments, has evolved since JungHenson started practicing medicine. For patients, earlier MS diagnoses lead to improved outcomes for patients.

Swedish/Issaquah, hospital executives said in introducing the facility to the community, is meant to do the same for health care.

“It’s about efficiency. It’s about my patients not having to go halfway across town to access the care that they need. I can just walk down the hall and say, ‘Hey, Dr. So-and-so, would you mind seeing my patient?’” JungHenson said. “That’s the provision of continuity of care that is really the core of the patient experience. I’m really excited about it.”

The hospital is built to last for a century. JungHenson can impart a lasting influence on medical staff members for years to come.

“I see my role as developing the culture for the medical staff,” she said. “What does it mean to be part of the medical staff at Swedish/Issaquah?”

Hospital offers high-tech healing

JungHenson joined the hospital system as a physician 21 years ago and, as she built a career, she also experienced Swedish as a patient when she delivered both of her children at the hospital.

The knowledge shaped how she approached the chief of staff role as the Issaquah hospital prepared to open.

“One of the beautiful things about Swedish/Issaquah, which I’m really excited about is, because we’re building a hospital from the ground up and bringing together a new medical staff — some of whom are from the community and have not been traditionally part of Swedish, and some of whom are Swedish employees, like me, and have been for a long time — I think it’s really a wonderful opportunity to tie together a lot of people with talent and grow a wonderful medical staff,” she said.

JungHenson appreciates high-tech — electronic patient records, for instance — and old-fashioned — a compassionate bedside manner — elements in equal measure. Swedish/Issaquah, she said, is meant to combine established practices and innovations in order to speed patients’ healing.

“It’s really exciting the way the hospital has been designed, in that we’re trying to figure out how to most efficiently manage the patient’s course, so that there isn’t redundancy, so that there isn’t waste,” she said. “I think it’s a wonderful adventure that we’re going on.”

Wellness is doctor’s focus for patients

Come late summer, just before the season changes to a mushy gray, JungHenson calls on colleagues, patients and others to join the effort to fund MS research.

The fundraiser is no evening-gown-and-black-tie affair. Instead, JungHenson and company pedal across Evergreen State countryside each year for Bike MS as a team called the Swedish Smyelin Babes.

Swedish, of course, is for the hospital, smyelin is a riff on myelin, a nerve insulation destroyed in MS, and babes, JungHenson explained, is a unisex term.

The ride offers a snapshot for patients and colleagues. JungHenson is comfortable as a leader, deploys a playful sense of humor to put patients at ease, and understands how recreation and medicine can — and should — coexist.

“We all have an obligation to be really proactive about taking care of ourselves, making sure that we do all of the preventative health things that we’re supposed to do, like mammograms and colonoscopies and what-not as you get older,” she said.

Similar messages about preventative care underpin discussions between the doctor and patients. Concern sometimes prompts JungHenson to surreptitiously snatch patients’ cigarette packs during appointments.

“I’m shameless,” she said.

JungHenson, a runner in addition to being a longtime cyclist, also encourages patients to put aside excuses and exercise, just as she does.

“It’s not pretty. I’m not a fast runner. I run like a little old lady,” she said. “But it’s all about taking care of yourself.”

‘She turned every stone for me’

JungHenson met Dan McFadden after the Redmond resident returned from a trip to the Amazon last fall.

The neurologist soon confronted a medical mystery. The cause behind McFadden’s inexplicable pain, tingling extremities and rash remained elusive, but JungHenson persevered.

“That jungle is a Petri dish for strange, little pathogens that they may not even test for. She’s really had to search high and low, and has done all kinds of tests on me to look for it,” he said. “We know it’s there, because of the symptoms. We just can’t find the cause of it. She hasn’t given up. She hasn’t said, ‘Well, that’s all I can do.’”

McFadden initially assumed a chigger bite caused the strange symptoms, but the trigger is still unknown. The search for a diagnosis prompted JungHenson to reach out to other specialists.

“She turned every stone for me from a neurological perspective, but also worked to get me in to see an infectious disease doctor and is now taking a look at other possible causes,” he said.

The effort also represents collaboration between doctor and patient.

“I think of the patient-physician interaction as being a place where we figure out what’s going on, come up with a medical explanation for what’s happening and then coming up with a plan that I’m comfortable with but, more importantly, what the patient’s comfortable with,” JungHenson said.

Excelling in ‘a difficult specialty’

Such challenges led JungHenson to consider a career in neurology and specialize in MS. Neurology is a complicated field, and she also treats dementia, encephalopathy and stroke patients.

“My first very patient in my neurology rotation as a medical resident at Northwestern University in Chicago was a multiple sclerosis patient,” she recalled.

Then, little more than 20 years ago, MS diagnoses represented a worst-case scenario. No Food and Drug Administration-approved treatments for the disease existed.

“Neurology is a difficult specialty. The whole gist of what we do is, we figure out where the problem is, where the lesion is. In multiple sclerosis, because you have multiple lesions, it becomes very, very complicated,” JungHenson said. “As a young medical student trying to learn neurology, I was totally overwhelmed by this patient. It really was a very hard patient for me to figure out and learn how to take care of.”

The options later expanded for MS patients. Nowadays, physicians can offer eight FDA-approved therapies for the disease. Even as treatments entered the marketplace, nothing can substitute for patient empowerment and knowledge — tenets JungHenson advocates to patients.

“I take care of some very amazing people who, despite their disability, have really conquered their disease mentally,” she said. “I get a lot of motivation and inspiration from my patients.”

Warren Kagarise: 392-6434, ext. 234, or wkagarise@isspress.com. Comment at www.issaquahpress.com.

Judd Kirk, of Port Blakely Communities, Mayor Ava Frisinger, Swedish CEO Dr. Rod Hochman and Gov. Chris Gregoire (from left) chat after the Swedish/Issaquah groundbreaking ceremony in October 2009. By Greg Farrar

Long before dignitaries gathered on windswept Grand Ridge on a cold October day to dip shovels into soil for a Swedish Medical Center campus in Issaquah, hospital executives asked community members to shape the facility.

The hospital system turned to a former Issaquah School District superintendent to lead the group, and enlisted a community cross section — 20 or so medical professionals, elected officials, community leaders, senior citizens and young parents — to serve.

The group shaped the hospital in the months before the October 2009 groundbreaking ceremony and continues to advise executives about Swedish/Issaquah.

“We were clearly looking for people who were not afraid to express their opinion, who were not afraid to tell us we were all wet and wrong,” said Dr. John Milne, vice president of medical affairs for Swedish/Issaquah and the emergency and ambulatory care centers in Redmond and Mill Creek. “We didn’t handpick people because they were going to be yes people.”

Former Superintendent Janet Barry, a Sammamish resident and Community Advisory Committee leader, said the group tackled a paramount question early on: “How do people fit into this building?”

Members emphasized modern technology for the hospital, but also advocated for softer touches, such as ample artwork and natural light. (Both features factor prominently into the completed hospital campus.)

“They always said, ‘Yes! We want high-tech, but not at the expense of that human warmth that makes people feel welcome and makes them feel that they’re in a highly personal place,’” Barry said.

Committee members said Swedish/Issaquah represents a key economic development component for the community.

“There’s no other community the size of our Issaquah-Sammamish community that doesn’t have a first-rate hospital facility. It’s been the missing piece,” Barry said. “You know that I believe we have a world-class school district, and I think this health-care dimension of our community life has been the missing piece. I’m thrilled that that’s going to be there.”

Issaquah Mayor Ava Frisinger said the outreach effort ensured that the hospital planning phase addressed community concerns.

“It was what certainly I, as mayor, and I would believe any of our policymakers would want to see with a major agency or organization that came into the community,” she said. “They made an effort very early on, when it was pretty evident that they were going to be here, that they wanted to have a group of community members as an advisory council.”

Phil Dyer, a former 5th Legislative District lawmaker and health-care expert, lauded hospital executives for the attention lavished on the community group.

“The Swedish people were bending over backwards to make sure that the design process really fit the needs of the community. I, frankly, had not seen such a thing. I’ve been involved in health care for more than 30 years, and I’ve never seen a large, institutional health care system take that much interest in designing and facilitating the community’s interests,” he said. “It was clear that they were listening to everything we said.”

The hospital also held town-hall-style meetings in Issaquah and Sammamish to ask residents about possible features for the facility.

“The best part of it was that Swedish listened and incorporated those ideas into the final hospital,” said Joan Probala, a committee member and Issaquah real estate agent. “They actually went out to the community, they asked what patients, what people wanted to expect when they got to the hospital, and they incorporated it into it.”

Though the hospital is complete, Swedish holds a long-term lease on a building along Northwest Sammamish Road for a standalone emergency room and medical offices. Milne said hospital leaders plan to ask Community Advisory Committee members about uses for the ER space after the facility relocates to Swedish/Issaquah on July 14.

Committee members also understood how the hospital could change behavior among Issaquah patients accustomed to traveling to Bellevue or Seattle for health care.

“This community has developed its patterns over long years. Where do they go to get health-care services?” Barry said. “It’s going to invite new patterns. That’s going to take a little bit of time, but I think the Swedish reputation will be significant in helping people to find their new patterns.”

Warren Kagarise: 392-6434, ext. 234, or wkagarise@isspress.com. Comment at www.issaquahpress.com.

‘Anahit’ by Julie Speidel. Contributed

Committee worked to find local artists of all ages for collection

Swedish/Issaquah will continue the medical center’s lauded promotion of healing through art. The new hospital features approximately 200 pieces by more than 60 Northwest artists — several of them from the Eastside — in the medical office building and emergency room.

“When patients become absorbed in a work of art, their bodies’ physiology actually changes, moving from sensations of stress and fear to feelings of relaxation and hope,” according to Swedish/Issaquah’s website.

“It’s pretty simple — art does heal,” volunteer chairwoman of the Art Committee Joyce Turner said. “It humanizes what could be a dehumanizing environment.”

A history and culture of art

Swedish Medical Center has embodied that philosophy since the 1960s, when then-Surgeon Medical Director and CEO Allan Lobb decided to incorporate art into the culture of the hospital.

Turner assumed Lobb’s artistic role when he retired in 1988. She has been adorning the walls and spaces of Swedish facilities ever since. The medical center’s art portfolio now numbers in the 2,000s.

The search for the Issaquah campus’s collection began with an art committee of 15 hospital staff and community members, Turner said. They were charged with supporting an environment associated with the hospital’s overarching theme of “nature, nurture and community.” The committee structure was key to creating a collection with a personality that befits the community in which the hospital is situated.

From there, members of the committee visited galleries seeking the works of Northwest artists that reflected the “nature, nurture and community” theme. These art lovers and connoisseurs brought their chosen pieces of art to the entire group for review.

The result is what Turner calls “an eclectic collection” of sculpture, metal and wood, oil and caustic paintings, watercolor and fine prints.

“Some people will hate some of it, some people will love it all,” Turner said. “When you have a large committee you do have people with different tastes, but it kind of all balances out.”

Healing, engagement and distraction

That’s the beauty of art, she said. One piece may spark a host of opinions, but each piece is meant to provoke thought in all its viewers.

“It’s all about healing and an engagement,” she said. “And a distraction for people.”

The Swedish/Issaquah collection will also incorporate 17 works by 34 children and young adults from the Eastside. The art committee communicated a request for young artists from the Issaquah School District and recruited Brooke Kempner to create final products out of the students’ work. A great example of Kempner’s and the children’s work is “Horse Joy,” a collage of eight students’ drawings of a horse.

Swedish’s extensive art collection is financed by donations, gifts to the Art Endowment Fund and 1 percent of all construction costs.

According to the Washington State Arts Commission website, the state enacted a law in 1974 requiring 0.5 percent of construction costs for any public place to pay for the acquisition of art. King County, in fact, had established a similar ordinance the year before that required 1 percent of public place construction costs to be set aside for art.  Swedish had been including art into its building costs since the 1960s.

“Swedish kind of made incorporating art the norm,” Turner said. “After the state policy was passed, other private nonprofits began following suit.”

The Swedish/Issaquah art committee collaborated with artEAST, a nonprofit visual arts organization with the mission of supporting the community’s artists, to find local artists to contribute to the collection.

“Our role was to gather portfolios for Swedish to introduce them to additional Issaquah/Sammamish and area artists they might not otherwise be familiar with,” artEAST Executive Director Karen Abel said. “ArtEAST membership consists of 200 artists and art supporters, so we had a wider contact list than they did.”

Pieces are life-affirming, an escape

‘Crimson Kiss’ by Susan Melrath. Contributed

Several of the local artists Swedish/Issaquah features are passionate about the role of art in public spaces and its healing power in a medical setting.

Dixie Parker-Fairbanks, an acrylic painter based in Issaquah, knows the value of art in hospital settings well. She spent the last seven months of her husband’s life in the University of Washington hospital. Richard Fairbanks was a well-known potter who had dedicated his life to creating art.

“One of the things we did in the evening was take him around to look at the artwork, to get out of the sterile room,” Parker-Fairbanks said. “I hung one of my flower paintings in his room and the doctors all came and looked at it. It gave them a pause from their work.”

Her piece, “Bucharest Bouquet,” of a blue-and-white vase holding pale yellow sunflowers on a multishaded blue background has been moved from the Lake Sammamish Swedish campus to the new Issaquah campus.

Redmond painter Susan Melrath, an artist who Swedish Art Program Manager Nancy Stoaks called an exciting new addition to the collection, was surprised by the hospital’s choice of her work.

“I heard that hospitals didn’t buy pieces with red in them,” she said.

The art committee purchased Melrath’s “Crimson Kiss,” a large flower of myriad brilliant reds.

“I asked them why they bought that piece,” Melrath said. “They said it’s life affirming. I think that’s true about my work.”

Another Issaquah artist Stoaks said she is looking forward to featuring, Ricco di Stefano, said he creates paintings of “nondescript locations that people can project their own places onto.”

Di Stefano’s depiction of a nonspecific farm, “Morning Mist,” is an expression of a memory of a feeling he had.

“People seem to go home in my paintings,” di Stefano said. “They find a place that makes them happy. They escape.”

‘Art is a bare necessity’

Paul Vexler, a Snohomish artist whose “Big Suspended Six Inch Closed Knot” is on display in the atrium entry of the hospital, spoke about the importance of art in public places.

“I think that it’s a reminder that, well, buildings are more than places to work in, to get well in, to live in,” he said. “There is more to life than the bare necessities, or maybe art is a bare necessity.”

Sammamish artist and framer David Allison said his Swedish pieces, “Monument,” “Plowing at Dawn” and “Summer Green,” speak to the area, its farms and its natural history.

“I think art can have a healing presence,” Allison said. “People come through hospitals needing health and needing peace. Art supplies a lot of that.”

Vashon Island sculptor Julie Speidel’s blue copper, almost Picasso-esque sculpture “Anahit” is in one of the hospital’s courtyards. In all her work, Speidel captures the beautiful and the mysterious.

She referenced an Albert Einstein quote to explain her proclivity for mystery — “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science.”

“Art is powerful and mysterious,” she added. “ It’s wonderful if you can feel that going into a hospital. I think that art allows you to tap into beauty and beauty is healing.”

Emily Baer: 392-6434, or isspress@isspress.com. Comment at www.issaquahpress.com.