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Description

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Heartland Health is an integrated health delivery system which includes a Heartland Regional Medical Center Heartland Clinic Heartland Foundation and a Community Health Improvement Solutions Founded in St Joseph in 1984 Heartland seeks to improve the health of area individuals and communities and to provide the right care at the right time in the right place at the right cost with outcomes second to none Commitment to this mission has enabled Heartland Health to become the leader in health care in a 21county area of northwest Missouri northeast Kansas and southeast Nebraska Providing exceptional care and service in an honest respectful trustworthy and caring manner is simply the way Heartland operates

Heartlands vision for the 21st century includes a patientcentered fully integrated regional health delivery system inclusive of all payers and providers and is on course to become a benchmark as one of the best health organizations in the nation

Heartland Health developed from a merger of two prominent longstanding St Joseph hospitals giving it deep roots in the community With a strong commitment to meet the health care needs of the region Heartland provides medical services at every level of care The main campus is home to acute care services including an Emergency and Trauma Center and specialty centers such as the Heart Center the Cancer Center and the New Beginnings Birthing Center

Building healthier communities is the goal of the Heartland Foundation The foundation provides leadership and financial support for a range of programs and services including scholarships community revitalization efforts and innovative approaches to health and quality of life improvements

As the regions largest employer Heartland employs more than 3000 people In addition to providing quality health care to the community Heartland also offers competitive salaries and benefits to its employees This contributes to the fact that more than 60 percent of Heartland employees have greater than five years of service In fact there are generations of families who have selected Heartland as their employer of choice

Mission and Values
At Heartland Health we believe employees and medical staff are the key to our success We are here to provide exceptional care and service in an honest respectful trustworthy and caring manner In return we expect individuals to be responsible for their own and their familys health We are committed to our charitable notforprofit status with local ownership and governance

Our Mission
To improve the health of individuals and communities located in the Heartland Health region and provide the right care at the right time in the right place at the right cost with outcomes second to none

Our Vision
To make Heartland Health and our service area the best and safest place in America to receive health care and live a healthy and productive life

Our Values
Our vision and mission will be achieved through exercise of our core values

Respect

Honesty

Compassion

Trust

Integrity

Service

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History

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Today Heartland Health provides the people of greater St Joseph a level of care undreamed of just a generation even a decade ago our physicians now extract diseased gallbladders through a dimesize hole and spare the patient a world of pain cataracts are removed even more easily kidney stones are shattered and passed without surgery imaging technology lets our physicians explore the human interior with uncanny precision rehab technology breathes new life into shattered bodies babies born no bigger than a mothers hand survive and prosper All is done promptly and passionately The overnight hospital stay has become for many procedures obsolete And those patients who stay overnight inhabit an environment as clean as private and as comfortable as the world has ever known

But it hasnt always been this way in St Joseph Not by a long shot In 1860 when St Joseph emerged as the most prominent city between St Louis and San Francisco when its fabled Pony Express captured the imagination of the world there was no hospital at all In those days the full cycle of human drama from birth to death played out in the family home And the home was where virtually all health care was administered

When St Joseph Physicians drew up a standard rate card in 1845 the quothome visitquot topped the list The price 100 Like contemporary cab drivers these early docs charged an extra 50 cents for every mile they had to travel beyond the first and doubled the rates for a visit at night A quotsimplequot birth back then cost a family 500 twins cost 1000 Amputated fingers and toes went for 500 a digit This was tough work These physicians may have had one foot in the past a quotbleedingquot cost 50 cents but they also had one foot firmly in the future quotvaccinationquot cost 50 cents as well In 1861 the year the Pony Express ended and the Civil War began St Joseph launched its first hospital a humble affair known as the quotCity Hospitalquot located on the West end of Robidoux on the slope of Prospect Hill The hospital was designed not so much to heal the sick as to protect the community from their diseases In 1875 when improvements were obviously needed St Joseph drew on the quotcity dog taxquot the only real source of city income to make them

How much do we take for granted today Consider this in the beginning City Hospital administrators knew nothing of anesthesia or even antiseptics and it was not until 1891 that the hospital had either electricity or indoor plumbing In 1902 the city contracted with St Josephs Hospital to care for its charity patients and converted City Hospital into a quotpest housequot for smallpox patients quotCity Hospital is not a thing to be proud ofquot admitted a town historian in 1904 quotIt answers the purpose and that is about allquot

In 1872 the State Legislature approved 200000 for either a quotNorthwestern or Southwestern Lunatic Asylum quot Apparently the St Joseph citizens convinced the legislature that there was more need of such an institution in this part of the state And so quotState Hospital for the Insane No 2quot opened its doors here in 1874 More charitably known as quotState Hospital No 2quot this institution survived for many years in St Joseph but like City Hospital never really thrived Today its substantial campus has been converted to a state prison with construction of a much smaller 108 bed chronic care facility just being completed

In the 19th Century nurses bore the brunt of the work at City and other hospitals Typically one nurse would be responsible not only for the care of a 50person ward but for sweeping dusting lamp lighting coal stoking and window washing as well To accomplish this nurses routinely worked sevenday 90hour weeks with quotan evening off each week for courting purposesquot if well behaved and so disposed Intolerable behavior included drinking smoking wearing rouge and getting ones quothair done at the beauty parlorquot

In 1869 the Daughters of Charity of St Vincent De Paul opened a small hospital and school on Felix Street between 6th and 7th Streets Although the school remained open there seemed little need for a hospital and it shut down in 1872 By 1891 as the citys population swelled the Daughters reopened a hospital St Josephs Hospital on Powell between 9th and 10th Streets and there it would stand for the next 90 years known affectionately as quotSistersquot

Over time St Josephs Hospital kept adding kept adapting In 1895 a nursing school opened its doors In 1900 came a stateoftheart operating suite In 1908 a new hospital was built on site and in 1921 and 1957 new additions In 1973 the Daughters of Charity turned the hospitals operation over to a volunteer board In 1981 the hospital enjoyed a 25 million reincarnation at Riverside and Faraon

Looking back what impresses the outside observer about St Joseph is the unstinting individual and community effort that has inspired the hospitals Prominent among these good citizens is a father and son team Drs William T and James Weir Heddens In 1879 the senior Dr Heddens founded the citys first prominent medical school the College of Physicians and Surgeons While serving there in 1882 his son James performed an autopsy on the most famous man ever to reside in St Joseph in fact the most famous man of his time Jesse James

William however was treating a patient who would do the city more lasting good attorney Samuel Ensworth Inspired by Dr Heddens Ensworth left his entire estate to promote health care in the city and the result was the Ensworth Hospital Medical College into which the College of Physicians and Surgeons was merged in 1888 In 1891 the school graduated three women physicians the first in Missouri

By 1914 Ensworth College had run out of money but the hospital endured In 1924 the Methodist Episcopal Church absorbed Ensworth into the new stateoftheart Missouri Methodist Hospital a 1 million 200 bed testament to the generosity of the St Joseph citizenry In 1930 Methodist absorbed Noyes Hospital an ambitious but shortlived charity oriented hospital willed to life through the generosity of shoe manufacturer Charles W Noyes Methodist added a nursing school expanded in 1948 and again in 1956 took over Sunnyslopes isolation function and technology in 1950 purchased Mercy Osteopathic Hospital in 1957 and emerged as Methodist Medical Center in 1972

Although Sisters and Methodist formed the backbone of community care many smaller institutions helped sustain the health of the city The very names of these institutions speak volumes about the era that spawned them Northwestern Colored Hospital and Orphanage for instance or Sunnyslope Isolation Hospital or The Home for the Friendless or poignantly named quotHome for Little Wanderersquot Others like Emergency Hospital St Joseph Sanitarium for Rectal Diseases or St Joseph Hospital and LyingInChamber no longer met a health care need efficiently One more casualty General Osteopathic Hospital cited quothigh costsquot and quotunreasonable government regulationsquot for its demise But that was nearly 20 years ago Heaven knows what Generals administrators would think about todays costs and regulations

Times have changed St Joseph no longer has a medical college These functions have centralized elsewhere Methodist Medical Center and St Josephs Hospital joined together in 1984 to form Heartland Health a sophisticated regional health care delivery organization serving some 21 counties an organization that would certainly leave the good Drs Heddens awestruck were they to see it today

But the more things change the more they remain the same The good citizens of St Joseph continue to sustain community wellbeing through their generosity and their countless hours of volunteer work Collaboration and cooperation are the hallmark of local health care Area providers of childrens health and mental health services have teamed with state resources to satisfy unmet needs Health care technology continues to advance at a dizzying rate And once again more and more people choose to receive their health care at home