Celebrating 50 Years

In 1973, Dr. Gerald L. Wallace and Mrs. Celia Wallace began laying the groundwork for what would later become a comprehensive Medical Center. As founders of Springhill Memorial Hospital, they sought to “anticipate community needs, provide the newest technology, and have a competent caring staff.” 

The Wallaces teamed with a group of 31 physicians and four businessmen to establish the private hospital in West Mobile. The group had the foresight to realize that the shifting population of Mobile would be better served by a more convenient hospital. Springhill Memorial Hospital treated its first patient on Jan. 10, 1975.

Springhill Medical Center, as it’s now known, has grown in those 50 years to a medical campus employing more than 1,200 professionals. The facility includes not only the 270-bed hospital and Heart Center, but seven additional buildings that encompass everything from physician offices to rehabilitation, to an orthopaedic surgery center and a skilled nursing facility.

The Wallaces founded Springhill in the days before increased competition – when patients were less satisfied with the care they were receiving but had few local alternatives. The couple’s success with Springhill was a result of their dedication to please both patients and healthcare providers.

Following the death of Dr. Wallace in 1986, Mrs. Wallace continued upgrading technology and adding services to the medical facility, but her primary focus has not wavered. Even today, an enormous amount of energy is focused on studying patient satisfaction surveys and addressing the needs of patients and physicians.

It is the personal mission of each caregiver at Springhill to offer healthcare that is unmatched in quality, convenience, and benefit of use in a courteous and family-oriented manner. These values propagate the spirit of Springhill’s founding philosophy.

How Things Have Changed Over The Years

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, but it’s the technological advancements that 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.

Almost all medical units utilize computers these days, with their colorful screens and numerous 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.