The Courier-Journal (Louisville)
Growing strong
How Norton Healthcare became Louisville’s second-largest employer
It was Russell Cox’s third day of work as the vice president of support services at Norton Healthcare. ● He was wearing boots and standing in the middle of a sod field off Brownsboro Road and the Gene Snyder Freeway. ● It was September 2000 and Norton Healthcare was considering something the company had done several times before — expanding.
“It was raining, and I looked over and said, ‘I don’t know if this is going to work,’” Cox, who is now president and CEO of Norton Healthcare, recalled.
Despite his early skepticism, Cox would become an integral part of Norton Healthcare’s effort to create an innovative medical facility in an area that, at the time, had limited health care access. Today that sod field is Norton Healthcare Boulevard and home to the Norton Brownsboro Hospital campus, also known as “the hospital that Russ built,” according to a book commissioned by the company, “The Norton Healthcare Story: Compassionate Care Since 1886.”
Under Cox, Norton Healthcare has become Louisville’s secondlargest employer, rising to that distinction in 2021. It has more than 21,000 employees, just behind UPS, and is one of the leading health care organizations in the region with more than 400 facilities and providers across 31 counties in Kentucky and Indiana.
By comparison, Baptist Health, one of Norton Healthcare’s biggest competitors, is Louisville’s seventh largest employer, though it has more than 500 points of care stretching across Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, and Tennessee.
Over the past decade, Norton Healthcare has “reinvested more than $1 billion into new and existing hospitals, clinics and other services,” according to Renee Murphy, chief marketing and communications officer for Norton Healthcare.
And it is expanding again — this time growing its presence in western Louisville, another area with limited health care access.
On Nov. 11, Norton Healthcare plans to officially open Norton West Louisville Hospital, an estimated $90 million acute care facility at 850 S. 28th St. It will be the first of its kind in 150 years in Louisville’s West End, establishing Norton Healthcare as the largest health care provider in that community.
“If you look over the past five to seven years, I don’t think there’s been an organization that’s experienced more growth than we have,” said Cox, who became CEO and president in 2017. “And that’s important to our city. It’s important from an economic development standpoint for our city.”
But Norton Healthcare has also faced some challenges during those years, including a ransomware attack that potentially put patient information at risk and several lawsuits, including one alleging racial discrimination set to go to trial on April 8.
Norton has denied the allegations and said it strives to “maintain an equitable culture across every facility.”
The company says it has remained focused on bringing quality health care to all parts of Louisville and has received support from businesses, other nonprofits, Metro Government and local residents.
Norton Healthcare’s beginning and growth
Norton Healthcare started in 1886 as a single infirmary on the corner of Third and Oak streets named after Rev. John Norton, the associate rector of Christ Church Cathedral. From the beginning, the non-profit company has grown in response to community needs.
It opened Children’s Free Hospital after a tornado ravished Louisville in March 1890, leaving in its wake tons of children who were “injured, burned, terrified, in agony, dying,” according to “The Norton Healthcare Story: Compassionate Care Since 1886.” Parents had no place to take their children, the book stated, so Norton Healthcare opened what was the 10th children’s hospital in the nation. Over time and through mergers, the hospital would evolve into the Norton Children’s Hospital known today by its iconic hot air balloon logo.
In the early 1900s, Norton Healthcare created the Frontier Nursing Service, a group of nurses on horseback that traveled through the Kentucky mountains to provide health care to “the crippled” and sick in areas of the state lacking hospital services. In the mid-1940s, Norton opened a psychiatric clinic to help veterans returning from war with “mental illness and shell shock” — a radical advancement for the time.
By the early 1950s, Norton Healthcare had taken yet another revolutionary step, creating a health care unit focused on alcoholism and treating it as a disease — something that wouldn’t become a conventional part of health care for a few more decades.
“I think that what used to be considered radical is pretty mainstream anymore,” Cox said.
In the 1980s, Norton Healthcare saw a need for women’s health services and opened a pavilion focused on women’s health and maternity. It also began opening urgent care centers in Louisville, bringing health care to neighborhoods where people live. Norton Healthcare has since blanketed Jefferson County with immediate care centers and created hospital campuses like Norton Brownsboro.
“It’s a lot of joy and a little bit of hesitancy ... You’re going to be met with some hesitancy, we’ve seen projects start in west Louisville and never come to fruition, but you know, what I can say from our standpoint is we’re here and we’re not going away.” Corenza Townsend
Will be the chief administrative officer for the Norton West Louisville Hospital