Major Hospital/Major Health Partners history

By 1925, the American hospital had become an institution whose goals were recovery and cure to be achieved by the efforts of professional personnel and increasing medical technology.

She lived in the hospital until her death on Christmas Day, 1929.

In 1932, during the nadir of the Great Depression, a hospital census conducted by the Council on Medical Education and Hospitals revealed a shift of usage from privately owned hospitals to public institutions.

Source: “Hospital Service in the United States: Twelfth Annual Presentation of Hospital Data by the Council on Medical Education and Hospitals of the American Medical Association,” JAMA 100, 12(March 25, 1933): 887.

In the summer of 1946 it was decided to expand the maternity ward.

In 1947 a bill was passed to extend the hospital tax base to include the county.

In April of 1956, the hospital was in need of expansion.

Construction was delayed for two years; as in 1957, there was difference of opinion as to whether the hospital should be built on the existing site or at a new location on the edge of town.

July 1958, work began to add two new wings to the hospital.

The two new wings were put to use in the summer of 1960.

In 1961, the Major Hospital Foundation was formed for the purpose of receiving gifts, trusts, estates, and memorials to be used for the benefit of Major Hospital.

A new physical therapy department was established in 1963, in memory of former board president, Earl F. Hammond.

Moreover, Medicare and Medicaid, established in 1965, provided money for the care of the aged and the poor, respectively.

In 1969, the hospital established an intensive care unit.

Source: “The Nation’s Hospitals: A Statistical Profile,” Hospital Statistics 45, Part 2 (August 1, 1971): 447.

On August 26, 1976, the hospital board of directors, after lengthy discussions, adopted a resolution by a vote of four to three to build a new hospital at the present location.

In 1978, the hospital established a “Barney Award”, given in memory of Mrs.

The west wing was occupied in October 1981, and the new Major Hospital was dedicated on November 1, 1981.

Rosemary Stevens, “ ‘A Poor Sort of Memory’: Voluntary Hospitals and Government before the Depression,” The Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly, Health and Society 60 (1982): 558.

Medicare incorporated a prospective payment system in 1983, with federal programs paying a preset amount for a specific diagnosis in the form of Diagnostic Related Groups, or DRGs.

Starr, The Social Transformation of American Medicine; Charles E. Rosenberg, The Care of Strangers: The Rise of America’s Hospital System(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987).

Some of the larger not-for-profit corporations have bailed out public facilities through lease arrangements, such as the one between the Daughters of Charity’s Seton Medical Center and the public Brackenridge Hospital in Austin, Texas, that occurred in 1995.

Guenter B. Risse, Mending Bodies, Saving Souls: A History of Hospitals (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).

In spring of 2000 Major Hospital remodeled and expanded areas of the Medical/Surgical Inpatient Unit, ICU and Pediatrics.

In 2001 Major Hospital opened services in the Junction Plaza Mall located on East State Road 44.

In the winter of 2003 Major Hospital broke ground on a new campus in the Intelliplex Development.

In the fall of 2005, The Sleep Center of Major Hospital opened at 1622 East State Road 44 in the Junction Plaza.

In 2006, The Bariatric Center of Major Hospital opened its new, highly advanced facilities in the medical specialties wing of the hospital.

In 2007 two new additions opened at the Intelliplex Campus.

Also, in 2008 the new Major Health Partners branding campaign was launched.

The ReNovo Center opened in the summer of 2009.

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