SEATTLE – (April 19, 2017) – Virginia Mason has received a $5 million commitment from philanthropist Floyd Jones to establish the Floyd Jones Learning, Innovation and Simulation Center at Virginia Mason.

The center will serve as an education hub and incubator where Virginia Mason team members will collaborate with patients and their families in developing and testing processes to continuously improve quality, safety and the patient experience. The center is scheduled to open on the Virginia Mason campus in 2018.

This pledge brings Jones’ total support of Virginia Mason to more than $26 million. Ten years ago, he and his late wife, Delores, donated $20 million for construction of the Floyd and Delores Jones Pavilion at Virginia Mason. The pavilion houses the medical center’s emergency department, critical care unit, inpatient orthopedics and other patient services. Also, the Virginia Mason Cancer Institute is named in honor of Floyd and Delores Jones.

“Giving brings me more joy than anything else I could do or think of doing,” said Jones, a Seattle resident and retired stock broker. “I’ve personally experienced the commitment to quality and safety at Virginia Mason. I am proud to support its goal of transforming health care for the benefit of everyone.”  

“We are very grateful to Floyd for his very generous support of Virginia Mason,” said Chairman and CEO Gary S. Kaplan, MD. “He has been a true partner in our work. We are a learning organization and his gift will enable us to integrate innovation and simulation with learning to benefit our patients and our team members.”

The Floyd Jones Learning, Innovation and Simulation Center will enhance the ongoing work in which patients and their families regularly participate with Virginia Mason staff in the organization’s continuous-improvement workshops. These events use tools of the Virginia Mason Production System, the organization’s management methodology, to eliminate waste (anything that does not add value from the patient’s perspective) and to advance quality, safety and efficiency.

“Increasingly, we view patients and their families as our partners as we co-design health care processes together based on their ideas and needs,” Dr. Kaplan said. “It’s exciting to imagine where this important work will take us in the years ahead.”

In addition to Virginia Mason, Jones has donated millions of dollars to a variety of organizations over the years, including the Floyd and Delores Jones Playhouse in Seattle; American Civil Liberties Union; Seattle’s Union Gospel Mission; and the Stanwood-Camano YMCA. He and his partner, Alene Moris, are committed to equality, justice and basic human rights and they strive to improve their community in significant ways.

Jones, the son of a cotton sharecropper in the South, was born into poverty. He graduated from the University of Washington where he studied finance and foreign relations. In his autobiography, “Kisses for Breakfast,” he reflected: “I always wanted to do the right thing, to be helpful, to be good. What amazes me is that it all turned out so well. It was like a dream come true.”

About Virginia Mason Health System
Virginia Mason, founded in 1920, is a nonprofit regional health care system based in Seattle that serves the Pacific Northwest. In the Puget Sound region, the system includes 336-bed Virginia Mason Hospital; a primary and specialty care group practice of more than 500 physicians; regional medical centers in Seattle, Bainbridge Island, Bellevue, Federal Way, Kirkland, Issaquah and Lynnwood; Bailey-Boushay House, the first skilled-nursing and outpatient chronic care management program in the United States designed and built specifically to meet the needs of people with HIV/AIDS; Benaroya Research Institute, which is internationally recognized for autoimmune disease research; and Virginia Mason Institute, which trains health care professionals and others from around the world in the Virginia Mason Production System, an innovative management methodology for continually improving quality, safety and efficiency. Virginia Mason online: VirginiaMason.org

Virginia Mason Health System also includes Virginia Mason Memorial, a 226-bed hospital serving the Yakima Valley in central Washington since 1950. Memorial online: YakimaMemorial.org

Media Contact:
Gale Robinette
Media Relations Manager
Virginia Mason Health System
(206) 341-1509
gale.robinette@VirginiaMason.org