Fry Healthcare Foundation

In 1994, Fry Healthcare Foundation, named for Dr. E.E. Fry who started the hospital in 1907, incorporated as a non-profit 501-C-3 to help Boundary Community Hospital meet the healthcare needs of Boundary County, Idaho.

The word community in Boundary Community Hospital is more than just a name. The hospital has served the community of Boundary County for 106 years. And in turn, the community has supported and maintained the hospital as a quality place for healthcare.

The relationship between the hospital and the community is a mutually beneficial relationship. If the book of the hospital were open for us to thumb through, we would see throughout the 106 years the names of men and women who assisted at the hospital either through manual labor or through funding with financial support . Then, as we continue to turn the pages of the book, low and behold, ten, twenty, thirty, sometimes sixty or seventy years later, their names appear again. This time on the receiving end of hospital care as hospital patients, outpatient clinic visitor, or as an extended care resident.

The hospital is our community’s place that provides healthcare for individuals in need. Many people come through the hospital emergency doors with the clock running out of time for their life. To make it to an out-of-town medical facility is not a choice. They need stabilized immediately. For these people, our hospital is the difference between life and death.

For others, our rural hospital is a place for medical tests and visits to specialty physicians saving countless on-the-road hours driving to healthcare facilities in denser populated areas.

Throughout the 106 years, our community has purchased up-to-date equipment and maintained a well-appointed building for their medical treatment.

Although our hospital is County owned, Boundary County taxes supply only 1% of the costs of the hospital’s equipment and facility. Out of a 13.5 million dollar annual budget, only $136,000 of the budget comes from tax revenue. All other monies are raised by patient usage, grants, the Hospital Auxiliary, and through Fry Healthcare Foundation’s fund-raising events, endowments and gifts. 

An authentic culture of compassion and respect for the patients prevails at Boundary Community Hospital.  Compassion and respect reaches beyond being a goal. It is beyond being an idea. It is a purpose—exhibiting itself as a reality.

Most people visiting the hospital are aunts and uncles, grandmas and grandpas, cousins, siblings, neighbors and even parents and children of the employees. That is the way it is in a small community. Yet, even those patients who have not past or present bonds with the employees are treated with respect. From where does this compassion and respect arise? There are several answers to that question, but what is important is that it is there, from the top administrator and board member down through all departmental heads to the employee who is working in the middle of the night when most of the world is sleeping.

Compassion and respect means going the extra mile to make someone comfortable.

It means preparing the van and taking three residents from extended care out to Smith Lake to sit on the dock and fish. It means somebody in the hospital cleaning the fish. It means the kitchen staff cooking and preparing the fish. It means staff members congratulating the anglers.

Boundary Community Hospital is a 20 acute care bed and 32 extended care bed facility located on a 2.5-acre campus in a Northern Idaho county of 10,000 residents.

At Boundary Community Hospital, The Outpatient Clinic has 16,800 outpatient visits annually; 1,850 Acute Care patient days per year; 3,000 Emergency Department visits per year, and 10,580 Extended Care Facility resident days per year.

Fry Healthcare Foundation is a nine-member all volunteer board dedicated to raising funds for the hospital.

Close to one million dollars has been raised and expended for equipment and services at Boundary Community Hospital by the Fry Healthcare Foundation since 1994.

Fry Healthcare Foundation sponsors two fundraising annual events; the Annual Golf Tournament in June and the Festival of Trees in December.

Charitable donations to Fry Healthcare Foundation can take many forms. Outright gifts are tax deductible and may include cash, life insurance, securities, stocks, bonds, mutual funds, real estate, works of art and other items of value.

Memorial gifts are donations made in remembrance of a loved one, to commemorate a special event, or in honor of the care given to you or your family by the staff at Boundary Community Hospital.

Planned giving is a gift given for any amount. It includes wills and bequests, life insurance plans, charitable annuity trusts, charitable remainder trusts and others.

Thank you!