Froedtert, founded as Froedtert Memorial Lutheran Hospital, opened on September 29, 1980. It was named after
Kurtis Froedtert, a businessman, who donated $11 million to found the hospital after his death in 1951. The year of Froedtert's opening, it functioned as a "half-service" hospital, sharing operations with the nearby
Milwaukee County Medical Complex, later renamed the
John L. Doyne Hospital in honor of the former county executive. In 1995, Froedtert purchased the MCMC assets and structures, and became a full-service hospital. In 2001, Froedtert Hospital and Community Memorial Hospital in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin merged and formed Froedtert and Community Health. In July 2008, Froedtert and Community Health bought SynergyHealth in West Bend, Wisconsin, which included St. Joseph's Hospital West Bend, and the West Bend Clinic. In 2010, Froedtert and Community Health changed its name to
Froedtert Health. The name change was to create a more unified organization with the health care system's recent acquisitions. In February 2020, the hospital received widespread public criticism when a federal inspection following the death of a female patient, who suffered chest pain and died after waiting at the emergency room for two hours, revealed that the emergency room staff failed to check the vital signs of patients regularly in six out of twenty inspected cases. Such cases included not checking the vital signs for more than five hours of a patient who was brought in after taking painkillers and alcohol in a suicide attempt. It was also reported that the records of some patients were missing, including a case in which the staff failed to get the required signature of a patient who left the hospital against medical advice. ==Rankings==