Posted On: December 16, 2024
In 1974 shovels broke ground on what we today call Springhill Medical Center. Those founders had a clear vision, inspiration, and passion to provide high quality medical care for the community. Each year that vision has expanded with not only new brick and mortar, but medical advancements and acquisitions of exciting new technology.
Today’s Springhill Medical Center has sustained the hospital’s culture and the clinician-patient relationships while the technological advancements have boomed. The most significant changes since those early days have been to instruments such as infusion pumps, MRI and CT digital imaging, robotic surgical devices, and to life-saving devices such as heart valves. Then there’s modern-day concepts like telehealth and electronic health records that we now think of as commonplace technology.
Almost all medical units in hospitals utilize computers these days, with their colorful screens and copious buttons. These developments might have astounded our founders. It would all seem like modern magic to the clinicians of the hospital’s early days. Think about explaining the internet, smartphones, cloud services, and artificial intelligence (AI) to a 1975 physician or nurse.
Over the past 50 years, Springhill Medical Center has embraced each of these medical advancements and continued to utilize new technologies to offer the highest possible level of patient care. Since admitting our first patient on Jan. 10, 1975, we have met each year with continued growth and expansion, achieving numerous milestones along the way. One step at a time, our hospital has added new service lines, constructed new medical office buildings, expanded hospital units for a higher bed count, opened new specialized units, and brought in first-of-its-kind medical technologies for our region. What began in 1975 as a hospital with 47 beds, two nursing units, one floor, one building, and 75 employees, today includes 270 beds, 13 nursing units, three floors, seven buildings, and 1,200 employees.
Our founder, Dr. Gerald L. Wallace stated,
"As a hospital founder, to accept challenge, anticipate, then answer the needs. We at Springhill Memorial Hospital will rewrite the traditional and make the most advanced a common occurrence. To build a medical center second to none. To face the world boldly and say, this I have done.”
We appreciate the vision of Dr. Wallace and that of the Wallace family, as well as their determination to build an organization over the past 50 years that delivers to our community the highest quality healthcare.