Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital Celebrates 60 Years of Caring; Legacy of Building Healthy Communities
60 Years Strong
This
year marks the 60th anniversary of the opening of Santa
Rosa Memorial Hospital by the Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange, who
came to Sonoma County during the late 1940s at the
request of a committee of the Santa Rosa Chamber of Commerce to help build a
new community hospital.
At 8 a.m. on January 1, 1950, hospital administrator Sr. Rita Rudolph
officially opened the doors to Santa
Rosa Memorial Hospital, then a 90-bed facility staffed
by 10 Sisters, 93 employees and a medical staff of 70 physicians and surgeons.
Twelve patients were admitted and three babies were born that day.
A Legacy of Health and Community
An unprecedented fundraising campaign to build the
hospital was launched in 1947, and nearly every citizen of Sonoma County
pitched in to help in some fashion. As the Press Democrat reported at the
time, “Bars and liquor stores, beauty parlors, cafes, hotels, men, women, boys
and girls – everybody was eager to contribute his bit” toward the community
fundraising goal of $300,000. More than $355,000 was ultimately raised, and the
balance of the building’s estimated cost, $1.8 million, was financed by the
Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange. (As a rough comparison, that original 90-bed hospital
if built today would cost approximately $225 million to $270 million.)
The name “Santa
Rosa Memorial Hospital” was selected in honor of those
who lost their lives World War II and in memory of individuals and families
who, through their generous gifts, had made the hospital possible.
Today, Santa Rosa Memorial represents Sonoma
County’s largest hospital, with 278
beds, a Heart & Vascular Institute recognized in 2009 among the best in the
nation for heart attack intervention, and a trauma center serving the multi-county North
Coast region of California. It remains the county’s largest
provider of care to the uninsured and underinsured.
In 2009, inpatient visits and discharges totaled 12,146 at Santa Rosa
Memorial, and outpatient visits numbered 173,894 (including Emergency care,
Urgent Care, surgery, physical and occupational therapy, lab services, imaging,
etc.).
Building a Healthy Future
Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital’s
commitment to treating our patients with Dignity, Service, Excellence, and
Justice has never wavered. Our legacy of caring and building healthy
communities guides us in all we do and we look forward to 60 more years of
compassionate service to the community.
Our thanks go out to the thousands of employees and
volunteers who have dedicated their careers to Memorial Hospital
over the last six decades and have been witness to the historical changes that
are still taking place in our delivery of quality health care.
Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital's rapid heart attack response ranks # 1 of 949 U.S. hospitals
Local specialists in cardiovascular care, emergency medicine and
emergency medical services have methodically reduced the time needed to
diagnose serious heart attacks and restore blood flow to the heart, an
advancement that earned Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital a #1 ranking out
of 949 U.S. hospitals tracked for "door-to-balloon time" by the
American College of Cardiology Foundation's National Cardiovascular
Data Registry. Read more here.
Young philanthropists emerge in support of Petaluma Valley Hospital
A growing group of Petaluma residents is putting a new face on
philanthropy in Sonoma County, proving that the collective generosity
of community-minded residents in their 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s can
positively affect local health care just as profoundly as a single,
five-figure monetary donation. Read more here.