Recently Altru Health Systems has acquired Mercy Hospital in Devils Lake and that is a good thing for the people of the Lake Region area as Altru Health Systems is one of the Premier Health Care Providers in North Dakota. We welcome them whole heartedly.
On the other hand though it is kind of sad to witness the end of Mercy Hospital in Devils lake. I guess technically it ceased being Mercy Hospital in 1996 when the Catholic Health Corporation (Sisters of Mercy) merged with the Franciscan Health System and the Sisters of Charity Health Care Systems to create Catholic Health Initiatives (CHI).
In my mind though it has always been Mercy Hospital. My wife Linda and I spent virtually our entire medical careers at Mercy, our three children and a grandson were born there. So it feels like the loss of an old friend.
The Sisters of Mercy served the Lake Region’s healthcare needs for 130 years. They also were involved in education with St. Joseph’s and St. Mary’s schools.
I would like to begin this story with a brief history lesson about the Sisters of Mercy. They were started in 1831 by Mother Catherine McAuley in Dublin Ireland. She used a $1 million dollar inheritance and founded the first House of Mercy.
In 1895 they started the first hospital in Devils Lake, St. Vincent DePaul hospital on First Street. It had 30 beds and cost $7,000 to build and furnish.
In 1902 the Sisters of Mercy built the hospital in its present location for $75,000. It had a 25 bed capacity and a School of Nursing.
In 1936 an addition was added which expanded the bed capacity to 75. It cost $250,000.
In 1958 another addition was added at a cost of $1.5 million and expanded the bed capacity to 120.
In 1972 a renovation was done to the building at a cost of 3.5 million. The bed capacity was now 110.
On the ground floor was Respiratory Therapy, Physical Therapy, ER, Lab, Radiology, Medical Records, Doctors’ Lounge, Pharmacy, Surgery, ICU, Administrative offices, Gift Shop, and the wonderful cafeteria with Maggie’s one of a kind caramel rolls.
The cafeteria was very well known for it’s great home made food and many people from downtown would come there for lunch. Marge Anderson, RN Day Supervisor, myself, and a few others would come to work at 6:30 a.m. and eat breakfast before our shift started at 7:00 a.m. The cafeteria ladies always made sure we had a good nutritious breakfast like bacon and eggs but occasionally Marge would deviate a little and have ice cream. She’d say hey, it’s just like having a bowl of cereal!
The basement consisted of CSR, Laundry, Housekeeping, Maintenance, Print Shop, Purchasing, Personnel locker rooms, and storage. There was also a tunnel to the Convent on the east side of the hospital that the Sisters used. It was dimly lit and kind of spooky!
First floor was the medical wing, second floor was surgical, third floor was OB, and fourth floor was pediatrics which in 1977 was moved to second floor. There was also an apartment on fourth floor that was sometimes used by Sister Patrick. There was no signage indicating it and the only other people allowed to enter it besides her were Frank Senger and Don Soper from Maintenance and a couple of housekeeping ladies. Sometimes the apartment was also used by visiting clergy.
There was a dumbwaiter originating, (I think) on ground floor and went to all the nurses stations of the other 4 floors. This was used for med supplies and food deliveries.
Between the years of 1981 to 1994 there were many renovations done to the hospital. In 1993 a new 35 bed Acute Care wing was built and now Mercy Hospital was licensed for 50 beds. During this time renovations were done in other areas also.
In the United States the Sisters of Mercy sponsored more than 100 healthcare facilities, 15 colleges, and numerous secondary and elementary schools. The Sisters of Mercy were the first in the state to become Registered nurses in 1922.
In 1976 when my wife Linda and I move to Devils Lake we both began employment at Mercy Hospital. Linda was a Registered nurse and worked in Labor and Delivery for 38 years. I was a Respiratory Therapist and worked for Mercy Hospital on and off for 25 years.
When we started there in 1976, Mercy Hospital was still managed by the Sisters and there were several Sisters still working there.There were “hospital Sisters” and “school Sisters”. Some of the Sisters worked at St. Joe’s or St. Mary’s schools. The Administrator at the hospital was Sr. Mary Patrick Conlin. Sr. Patrick was a small feisty woman and when you were around her you always knew who was in charge.
A few of the other Sisters you may remember are Sr. Mary Pillart was the nurse anesthetist and when she retired from that position she became the archivist for Mercy history and she started the Print Shop. The information in this story is in a book she compiled in 2003 called Memories of Mercy. Sr. Mary was very soft spoken and had a good sense of humor. She lived to the age of 89.
Sr. Mary Paul Hayes was the former head nurse on the med-surg wing. At first notice Sr. Paul seemed gruff but actually was a very pleasant person and had a good sense of humor. She later did Pastoral Care and patient visits. She passed away at age 89.
Sr. Mary Margaret Hayes was a retired nurse (I think), she also worked in Pastoral Care and patient visits. Sr. Margaret was a very pleasant person to visit with. She lived until age 92. Sr. Margaret and Sr. Paul were biological siblings.
Sr. Ursula Max, I believe, was a retired nurse. I don’t know much about her but I do remember visiting with her. A nice person. She died at age 92. [Sr. Ursula was the principal of St. Mary’s Academy at the time the school closed following the fire which damaged the building during the 1978-79 school year)
Sr. Teresa Mohatt and Sr. Mary Annella Hager, I remember them, but I do not know their background.
Sr. Jeananne Sutton, Sr. Lila Espinoza, and Sr. Concepta LeDuc were “school sisters”.
The Sisters stayed at the Convent east of the hospital and utilized the tunnel in the basement to get back and forth. As they aged though this became more difficult for them to do so the hospital renovated the old Pediatric department on fourth floor into little apartments for them. A few of them later moved to the Convents in Valley City and Omaha to live out the rest of their lives. As you can see the Sisters led long lives, a fitting reward for doing the Lord’s work.
The Sisters were very good at providing healthcare and education but very poor at collecting money to pay for their endeavors. At times they were very financially strapped. Prior to 1965 most healthcare was self pay, there was no Medicare, Medicaid, and very little private insurance. But most hospital bills were relatively small though compared to today’s huge bills.
In 1965 Medicare was established and this changed the healthcare business tremendously. I believe it was Sr. Patrick who then hired Cliff Larson to establish and manage a business office.
Cliff told me a story once about when he was hired they gave him a big desk and on the right side of the desk was a large, deep drawer filled with unpaid bills given to patients throughout the years. It was the practice of the Sisters to provide a bill to the patient upon discharge from the hospital in the hope to get paid. But if the bill didn’t get paid, there was no follow-up bill sent so the Sisters ended up with a lot of charity accounts.
Cliff said he went through the bills and any over a year old he just threw away. The others he went to work trying to collect but he never used any aggressive collection tactics. Up until a few years ago the hospital would accept any monthly payment you would send no matter how small. Many people would pay only $5 or $10 a month on their bill and the hospital would accept it even though it probably cost them more than that to send and process the bill.
Once Medicare, Medicaid, and other insurances became involved, the billing and collection process became a lot more complicated.
A funny story about Cliff. Sr. Patrick decided that as Cliff’s job involved much more than just being Business Manager he should be given a better title so she made him the Assistant Administrator. And she instructed Charlie Wittkop, the Purchasing Manager, to get a new sign made for Cliff’s office.
Charlie did so but whoever made the sign must have decided that the words Assistant Administrator were too long so they abbreviated it to Ass Administrator. Charlie hung the sign by Cliff’s office door and everyone thought it was very humorous except for Sr. Patrick. She instructed Charlie to remove the sign and get a new one, which he did, but I’m sure he got an “earfull” from her.
Working at Mercy Hospital was rewarding as they conveyed the philosophy that every job was essential to their mission, Whether your job was that of CEO, Doctor, nurse, therapist, technician, housekeeping, maintenance, or cafeteria worker, all were just as essential to providing healthcare to the patient. No one could ever say “it’s not in my job description.” If help was needed, you stepped up.
This was called the “Mercy family spirit.” Everybody worked to get the job done. A good example of this was during the winters of 1977 and 1978. They were brutally cold, windy, and snowy winters. Many times roads were blocked. Some employees used snowmobiles to get back and forth to work. The hospital purchased or rented a snowmobile to get in town employees to work and back. The Maintenance department was in charge of the snowmobile and spent many hours transporting employees.
Often times if a storm was predicted employees would come into the hospital long before their shift started so they would get stranded at work instead of at home. They realized how much the patients were relying on them.
I think the best example though of the “Mercy family spirit” was when there was a fire in the ambulance in the ER garage. This was on 10-2-2001 and resulted in the tragic death of a patient. This patient was the mother of two Mercy nurses.
The fire inundated the Emergency Room with smoke and soot making it unusable. A call was put out for volunteers to help clean the ER and within an hour the ER was up and running again. And right after it was cleaned a patient came in with chest pain, had a cardiac arrest so a Code Blue was called. And the patient survived.
A group photo taken after the ER was cleaned showed 33 people who volunteered, although I am sure there were even more than that who didn’t stick around for the picture. The “Mercy family spirit” was very evident.
There were many things that made Mercy Hospital a great place and I think it was because of the Mission Foundation established by the Sisters of Mercy and the adherence to this mission throughout the years. I loved working for the hospital and have many wonderful memories of those days.
For many years Mercy Hospital has been the only hospital within an 80 mile radius that still delivers babies so they have touched a lot of lives around this area. Also Mercy owned and operated a Respiratory Home Care and Medical Equipment supply business for over 20 years called C.A.R.E. Medical that provided services and products for thousands of customers/patients within this 80 mile service area.
Mercy Hospital has played a very important role in the delivery of healthcare to the local communities around it.
Author’s note: The source for this story is a book called Memories of Mercy compiled by Sr. Mary Pillaert.
