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Central Kansas Medical Center history
Central Kansas Medical Center company history timeline
The KU School of Medicine can trace its origins back to one course offered in 1880.
1880 - The University of Kansas began offering a "Preparatory Medical Course." The mostly symbolic move didn't provide clinical training and students had to complete their degrees elsewhere.
The story of KU’s hospital in Rosedale began in 1894 when Doctor Simeon Bishop Bell (above), a Wyandotte County physician and real estate speculator, tried to bestow $75,000 in cash and land on the University.
In 1905, Mercy Hospital, now known as South Central Kansas Medical Center, was built at 801 N. First in Arkansas City.
When acceptance finally came in 1905, it was only after Bell had upped his pledge to $100,000, at which point construction began on the first Eleanor Taylor Bell Memorial Hospital.
1905 - The School of Medicine officially opened on Sept.
SCKMC was originally founded in Arkansas City on the corner of First Street and Birch in 1906 as Mercy Hospital.
First Bell.The first Eleanor Taylor Bell Memorial Hospital, opened in 1906 and built at a cost of $25,000, contained 35 beds.
If a meager budget, inadequate facilities and no statewide consensus as to whether the institution should even remain in Rosedale were not enough to dampen the Medical School’s spirits, Abraham Flexner’s 1910 exposé may have been.
Despite the development of its new campus and the fact that it now enjoyed considerably more legislative support, the Medical School was still, arguably, not a whole lot better off than it had been back in 1910 when Abraham Flexner penned his damning assessment.
The first hospital was quickly outgrown, so a new Bell Hospital opened in 1911, still on Goat Hill, and almost doubled the capacity of its predecessor.
As KU historian Clifford Griffin put it, “All that the Medical School’s leaders had was a small, inadequate, understaffed school with a poor reputation.” In the wake of the 1918 Kansas gubernatorial election, however, the KU School of Medicine found that it finally had an influential champion.
In 1919, both houses of the Kansas legislature approved the impressive sum of $200,000 to fund construction of a new hospital building in Rosedale, contingent on the governor’s condition that another site away from Goat Hill be provided at no cost to the state.
Upon taking office in 1919, Governor Allen summoned Doctor Mervin T. Sudler, the School’s associate dean and day-to-day administrator, to Topeka.
But by May 24, 1920, Allen was convinced he could persuade the legislature to support moving the Med School to the Kern tract, provided that KU first find a way to acquire the property without using state funds.
The measure would be put to a vote on June 21, 1920, just 12 days hence. [caption]Image: Kansas City, Kansas Public Library[/caption]
By 1921 Mercy Hospital had had doubled in size and transitioned from a single physician hospital to a physician partnership with multiple owners.
Built at a cost of $235,000, this four-story, column-fronted brick edifice received its first patients on June 26, 1924.
The son of Doctor Franklin E. Murphy, an original KU Med School faculty member who had been present at the third Bell Memorial’s creation back in 1924, the younger Murphy had led the School of Medicine as dean for three years.
1924 - The new School of Medicine opened in 1924 in its current location, 39th Street and Rainbow Boulevard in Kansas City, Kansas, after decades of disagreements about the school's location.
The City of Arkansas City purchased the structure and property in 1946, following the Great Depression and threats of foreclosure.
1948 - Dean Franklin D. Murphy, M.D., pitched a plan to state legislators to vastly expanded the Medical Center facilities.
The physican group sold Mercy Hospital in 1949 to the City of Arkansas City.
In 1951, the original building was torn down, beginning a series of major construction projects.
A new wing was added in 1951 with 20 more beds and a 35 bed convalescent care section.
The health system’s first organ transplant, performed in 1969, was a kidney transplant and the system’s 5,000th organ transplant was also a kidney transplant.
Additional construction projects continued through the 1970’s and 80’s.
1971 - KU extended its reach in Kansas, establishing a community-based clinical campus in Wichita.
The region's largest blood and marrow transplant program, established in 1977, offers lifesaving procedures for leukemia, lymphoma and other blood cancers.
On May 18, 1979, more than 2,000 people gathered in Kansas City, Kansas, for the new $58 million facility’s dedication.
On May 18, 1979, the KU School of Medicine christened what would become its fourth Bell Memorial Hospital.
In 1996, the facility changed its name to South Central Kansas Regional Medical Center in recognition of the fact that its service area had expanded beyond the boundaries of the immediate community.
The hospital marked an important milestone in 1998 when it became an independent hospital authority, receiving no state funding and no longer part of the School of Medicine.
Later in 2005, plans call for the Eleanor Taylor Building, now housing Information Resources and Medical Information Management, to be rededicated as Eleanor Taylor Bell.
The Center for Advanced Heart Care later opens in 2006.
2007 - The school celebrated the opening of the $52 million Robert E. Hemenway Life Sciences Innovation Center, attracting millions in grant funding and some of the nation's top researchers.
2008 - The Institute for Advancing Medical Innovation was established to hasten the discovery and development of new drugs and medical devices.
Construction crews broke ground on the replacement facility on November 5, 2009.
On March 17th, 2011 South Central Kansas Medical Center, the word “Regional” was removed to shorten the name, received their first patients at the new facility.
2011 - A new campus opened in Salina, advancing the mission to produce primary-care doctors for underserved areas.
In 2012, the hospital becomes the official healthcare provider of the Kansas City Chiefs.
The University of Kansas Hospital joined with the University of Kansas Physicians in 2017 to form The University of Kansas Health System.
The facility in Kansas City, Kansas, opens in 2019.
The December 2021 opening of levels 8, 9 and 10 in Cambridge Tower A on the main campus in Kansas City adds 100 rooms for patients.
The proton therapy center will open on the health system’s main campus in Kansas City in mid-2022.
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