Milestones Icon: Avista Adventist Hospital

Louisville-based Avista Adventist Hospital has undergone four name changes during its rich, 116-year history.

The oldest hospital in Boulder County, Avista started off in Boulder in 1895 as the Colorado Sanitarium.

It became Boulder Sanitarium and Hospital in the mid-1920s, then Boulder Memorial Hospital in the 1950s.

Boulder Memorial was sold to Boulder Community Hospital in 1989. The hospital moved to Louisville and changed its name to Avista in 1990, and today is one of 13 hospitals in the Centura Health network, Colorado’s largest health-care system.

The name Avista was chosen because the hospital is located on a hill with a fabulous view and vista is the Spanish word for view.

 When Avista was the Colorado Sanitarium, it encouraged people to pay attention to their emotional and spiritual well-being and have a good diet. At the time, it was a new idea that your health was connected to what you ate,” says John Sackett, Avista’s CEO.

People would come to the Colorado Sanitarium for a couple of weeks or even an entire summer, he said. “They weren’t necessarily sick, but didn’t necessarily feel vibrant.”

When the facility was called the Boulder Sanitarium and Hospital, it began taking care of sick people.

Despite all of the changes that have taken place over the years, some things have remained constant. Avista has always been a faith-based organization run by the Seventh Day Adventist Church.

Avista is well-known for its women’s services, delivering more babies than other places in the Boulder Valley.

The hospital ranks among the best in the country when it comes to patient, physician and employee satisfaction. Today, Avista has 114 beds and approximately 470 employees.

 Avista has set up different clinics in surrounding areas. In 2010, Avista Family Medicine opened in Gunbarrel and Boulder Holistic Medicine opened in Boulder. Avista Internal Medicine opened in Lafayette in 2011.

The hospital is not-for-profit, points out Sackett’s stepmother, Karen Sackett, who was director of nursing and assistant administrator at Boulder Memorial Hospital. That means the profit it generates goes back to the hospital. All revenue is reinvested in the hospital and the community. Avista also doesn’t have to pay the taxes that a for-profit hospital must pay.

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