Billings Clinic Celebrates Naming Ceremony for Fortin Trauma Tower

Billings, MT— On Monday, Billings Clinic unveiled the newly-named Fortin Trauma Tower at a naming ceremony on its downtown Billings campus. The transformational milestone was made possible through the generosity of the Fortin Family Foundation of Florida (Fortin Foundation), whose decades-long commitment to Billings Clinic continues to shape the future of health care across Montana, Wyoming, and the western Dakotas.

“The ability to care for trauma patients at the highest level is enhanced by having an outstanding multidisciplinary team,” said Gordon Riha, MD, Assistant Trauma Medical Director and General Surgery Residency Site Director at Billings Clinic. “This team approach to trauma care is further strengthened through the incredible generosity of the Fortin Foundation. The Fortin Trauma Tower now contains the requisite space, technology, personnel, and expertise to care for the most complex patients in the region.”

Because of the commitment and generosity of the Fortin Foundation – and so many others who share this vision – Billings Clinic was the first Montana hospital to become an American College of Surgeons (ACS)-verified Level I Trauma Center.

An ACS Level I designation is the highest standard in trauma care and means 24/7 in-house coverage by trauma surgeons and specialists. It means Billings Clinic provides advanced care for the most severe injuries and most critically ill patients in its intensive care units, surgical intensive care unit and rehabilitation center. It means caring for more than 1,200 trauma patients each year, conducting research that shapes the future of trauma medicine, and training the next generation of surgeons while coordinating care across the region through a state-of-the-art regional operations center. It means leading injury prevention and education efforts across the region so that fewer families have to face those critical moments.

This achievement is the result of years of planning, collaboration and the determination of people who refused to settle for “good enough” when lives were on the line. From our region's ranchlands to mountain towns, from remote oil fields to farming communities, the Fortin Trauma Tower is a symbolic lifeline – ensuring that whether it’s a highway accident or a farm injury, the highest level of trauma care is here, ready, and within reach.

“On behalf of the Billings Clinic Foundation, I want to extend our deepest gratitude to the Fortin Family Foundation of Florida for their extraordinary generosity,” said Nichole Mehling, Billings Clinic Foundation President. Their transformational gift to the Level 1 Trauma program was among the very first commitments made to this effort, setting the pace for others to follow. Because of their vision and belief in our mission, the residents of Montana and northern Wyoming will have access to the highest level of care in their most critical moments. The support of the Fortin Foundation ensures that lives will be saved, and families will be kept whole for generations to come.”

The Fortin family’s legacy of giving dates back more than five decades. In the 1970s, Philip N. Fortin served on the hospital’s Board of Directors and made the largest philanthropic gift in its history at that time to help build a new critical care wing — a gift that became the cornerstone of the hospital’s cardiac care program and led to Montana’s first open-heart surgery in 1972.

Following Mr. Fortin’s passing, Mary Alice Fortin continued the family’s commitment, funding numerous projects to enhance patient care, including the Mary Alice Fortin Health Conference Center. Their generosity has also spurred innovation in mental health services, an often-underfunded area in rural regions. 

Billings Clinic established the Philip N. Fortin Philanthropist Award to honor this enduring commitment and inspire others to follow their example.

Their legacy continued in 2022 when the Fortin Family Foundation made a $7 million gift toward the development of the Level I Trauma Center as part of Billings Clinic’s $30 million capital campaign. This transformational support, the largest gift the Fortin Foundation has ever made to a Montana nonprofit, came at a critical moment for the region, where vast rural distances in Montana and Wyoming make immediate access to advanced trauma care both vital and challenging.

Billings Clinic and Logan Health are united as a not-for-profit, Montana-based, independent health care system focused on keeping people close to home and connecting care in communities throughout the region. The unified health system serves an area that includes most of Montana, northern Wyoming and the western Dakotas. A not-for-profit organization led by a physician CEO, Billings Clinic is governed by a board of community members, nurses and physicians. At its core, Billings Clinic is a physician-led, integrated multispecialty group practice with a 336-bed hospital and Montana’s first Level I Trauma Center. Billings Clinic is the largest trauma center and the first established and longest standing ACS-COT continually accredited trauma center in the state of Montana. Billings Clinic has more than 4,500 employees, including nearly 600 physicians and advanced practitioners offering more than 80 specialties. Billings Clinic is the first Magnet-designated health care organization in Montana and a member of the Mayo Clinic Care Network.