MURRAY — Utah medical device pioneer James LeVoy Sorenson has donated $6 million to the new Intermountain Medical Center, bringing the billionaire's total recent contributions to IHC to $22 million.
Sorenson's latest contribution will help to offset construction costs of the Murray hospital's mammoth 15-floor patient tower, said H. Gary Pehrson, chief executive officer of IHC's Urban Central Region.
"This is a significant recognition of Jim's beginnings when he started so many things in the medical device arena, and that in tandem he developed with physicians and others at LDS Hospital," said Pehrson, adding that the donation would perpetuate Sorenson's legacy as a "true pioneer" in the medical device industry.
The new structure will be known as the J.L. Sorenson Patient Tower and will include 232 inpatient beds, three specialty intensive care units, 22 operating room suites and an emergency department equipped with 56 treatment areas.
"This is where I made it, in medical devices," Sorenson told the Deseret Morning News. "It is a great thing to be able to help people, not only using philanthropy, but technology. I did a lot of simple medical devices that are constantly used millions of times a day."
One of those devices was the first disposable surgical mask, used in operating rooms every day around the world.
"That's a big deal," Pehrson said. "It used to be cloth."
In addition, Sorenson developed hemodynamic monitoring of the heart, where a catheter is placed in the heart intravenously.
"That paved the way really for other things," Pehrson said, "like stenting coronary arteries."
Through his charitable foundation, Sorenson has given millions of dollars to myriad causes in recent years, including $1.5 million used to help identify victims of the Dec. 26, 2004, Indian Ocean tsunami; $1 million in matching funds to the state of Utah when funding for Medicaid's dental care program was not extended by the state Legislature; and $5 million to Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., the world's leading institution for higher education of the deaf and hard-of-hearing.
At a net worth of $4.5 billion, Sorenson, a Utah resident and now 85 years old, ranked as the 177th richest person in the world, according to a March story by Forbes magazine, which tracked the 2007 rankings of the world's richest people.
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