Merit Award: St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center
St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center first opened its doors in March 1895, and more than a century later it is a leader in Arizona health care. St. Joseph’s has come a long way since the Sisters of Mercy opened it as a six-bedroom cottage in Downtown Phoenix, originally founded to help tuberculosis sufferers who came to Phoenix to improve their health.
The hospital went through numerous expansions and fundraising efforts before opening in 1953 at its current location on Fifth Avenue and Thomas Road as a 325-bed hospital. Since then, St. Joseph’s has almost doubled in size and the campus now encompasses 55 acres. In 2010, the hospital had nearly 40,000 inpatient admissions and more than 435,000 outpatient visits.
Along with providing excellent health care, St. Joseph’s is one of the state’s largest teaching hospitals, having trained more neurosurgeons than any other hospital in the world. St. Joseph’s is the new regional campus of Creighton University Medical School.
This not-for-profit hospital also houses the internationally renowned Barrow Neurological Institute, the Heart & Lung Institute, St. Joseph’s Children’s Health Center, a Level I Trauma Center verified by the American College of Surgeons, the Muhammad Ali Parkinson Center, and much more. The only transplantation programs in the Valley, the Heart & Lung Institute at St. Joseph’s has conducted approximately 70 lung transplants and five pediatric heart transplants.
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