For more than one hundred years Gritman Medical Center has been providing quality health care to the people of the Palouse region. Over the years there have been many changes in our community--and in health care--since the visionary Dr. Charles Lee Gritman arrived in Moscow in 1893. At that time there were no hospitals in Latah County and the few doctors available all practiced from home offices.

Dr. Gritman significantly changed health care delivery on the Palouse. Within five years of his arrival, he had opened Latah County's first hospital, Gritman Hospital, on the corner of Main and Seventh Streets.

Even in those early days the hospital was on the cutting edge of technology, with Dr. Gritman being credited as performing the first appendectomy and tonsillectomy in the region.

After Dr. Gritman's death in 1933, a group of community leaders formed the Moscow Hospital Association and purchased the hospital from Gritman's widow. With funds raised from the community, the Hospital Association set forth to build a new hospital. By 1944 a modernized, three story brick hospital was opened. Though remodeled throughout the years, the original building is still in use today.