Borgess became the first Kalamazoo hospital when it officially opened its doors to area residents on December 8, 1889, 120 years ago.
 
Before Borgess was formed, Kalamazoo area residents didn’t have a place to go when they were sick. Monsignor Francis O’Brien would sometimes give last rites to people who died from illness in the City Jail. These people were not being punished in a jail cell. They were simply taken there because there was no other place for the sick to go. Monsignor O’Brien cared, but he needed others to help him and a place to serve the ill and injured.
 
Caring is why the Sisters of St. Joseph came to Kalamazoo from Watertown, New York in the summer of 1889 at the request of Monsignor O’Brien. Caring is why they stayed in Kalamazoo and eventually founded other hospitals in Michigan. The original 11 Sisters who would staff Borgess Hospital traveled to Kalamazoo by train in July 1889. The previous year, Bishop Caspar Borgess of Detroit donated $5,000 from his mother’s estate to help buy a mansion on Portage Street that would be transformed into a 20-bed hospital. The new hospital would soon bear his name; however, more work needed to be done.
 
The original 11 Sisters did nearly everything except stoke coal
 
The 11 Sisters helped raise additional funds to complete construction of the new hospital. Among many other tasks, they helped organize a weeklong Borgess Hospital Fair in September 1889. All the efforts of the Sisters were successful. Borgess Hospital officially opened its doors on December 8, 1889. The Sisters worked hard to provide care for patients. Caring meant more than helping patients at the bedside. They did everything but stoke coal in the furnace at the new hospital. Everything meant cleaning walls, windows, and floors. They painted and varnished, prepared meals, did laundry and sat up all night with patients following every major operation. The Sisters also tilled a produce garden and managed cows and chickens to help supplement the hospital food supply.
 
Caring was well received because it was desperately needed. Patient numbers increased every year. Many additions were made to the original building until Borgess grew into a 100-bed hospital. A second building was needed to care for the growing number of patients. “New Borgess” opened in 1917 on Gull Road just in time, as every bed at both facilities was needed to treat patients of the calamitous 1918 flu. The original Borgess Hospital remained open until shortly after the Gull Road facility was expanded in 1927.
 
In 1940, Borgess President Agnes Murphy, SSJ, offered Homer Stryker, MD, one of the area’s first orthopedic surgeons, an office and a workshop where he could develop new orthopedic treatment tools, like the oscillating saw, which cuts casts without injuring underlying skin. While compassionately treating countless patients, he invented many excellent new devices and founded the Stryker Corporation, which now creates medical products that help people throughout the world. Dr. Homer Stryker’s legacy of innovative medicine and inspired care continues at Borgess Health with the launch of the Borgess Bone & Joint Institute.
 
Martin Verzi became the first lay Borgess president in 1968. He brought a bigger perspective to Borgess and Kalamazoo by beginning comprehensive heart, neurology/neurosurgery and mental health programs. The former Army health care officer also brought health care experts from throughout the world to lead these programs. During his tenure, one of the first Neuro Intensive Care Units in Michigan was opened at Borgess, Borgess began offering open-heart surgery decades before many other Michigan hospitals and Borgess became one of the first hospitals in America to provide revolutionary coronary angioplasty procedures.
 
Dramatic Borgess growth continued with the addition of such services as Borgess at Woodbridge Hills in 1995. This large, comprehensive facility in Portage provides outpatient surgery, immediate medical care, diagnostic radiology, laboratory services, a pharmacy, occupational therapy, physical therapy and offices for many leading physicians.
 
In 1998, Borgess opened the Borgess Health and Fitness Center. This large service offers medically based exercise options, cardiac and pulmonary rehabilitation programs, integrative medicine options and comprehensive Borgess Spine services are now located within this 101,000 square foot facility.
 
The Sisters of St. Joseph Health System and the Daughters of Charity National Health System united on November 1, 1999 to create Ascension Health, a new health ministry that is now the largest Catholic healthcare system in America with 113,000 associates serving in more than 500 locations in 19 states and the District of Columbia. Ascension Health hospital affiliates and health facilities are the foundation and the center of the organization’s organizational framework model. Local boards and CEOs operate in a manner that suits individual markets.
 
Borgess Medical Center has grown to more than one million square feet on a 60-acre campus under the leadership of Paul Spaude, President and CEO, Borgess Health. Recent additions are the Stryker Center, a comprehensive outpatient facility (with all private rooms) attached to the north wing of Borgess Medical Center and named in honor of Dr. Homer Stryker. The Borgess Brain & Spine Institute is another addition to Borgess Medical Center and it is a testimony to the decades of Borgess leadership in neurologic and neurosurgery care.
 
Other members of the Borgess Health Ministry have also recently expanded. Borgess-Lee Memorial Hospital, in Dowagiac, celebrated the completion of its enlarged emergency department in October 2009. And the newest member of Borgess Health–Borgess Gardens–opened its doors to the community on November 18, 2009. This 101-bed skilled nursing and rehabilitation center is located on the Borgess at Nazareth Campus. It is the first new nursing home in Kalamazoo County in more than 20 years.
 
Expansion also means increased influence of specialty programs like the Borgess Heart Institute at Borgess Medical Center. It is a leader in heart care…locally and around the world. New heart treatments developed by Borgess Research Institute professionals are helping patients in more than 90 countries. Experienced, Borgess heart experts perform more open-heart surgeries and other heart procedures than any other hospital in southwest Michigan.
 
Borgess Health now includes 120 sites of care in 11 southwestern and south central Michigan counties, as well as several owned or affiliated hospitals, a nursing home, ambulatory care facilities, home health care, physician practices, managed care services, a cancer center and an air ambulance service. Together, these Borgess Health entities form a health care network that offers a complete continuum of services to 1.1 million people. Borgess Health is also a member of Ascension Health, the nation’s largest Catholic and largest nonprofit health system.
 
The hands-on role of caring through Borgess Health is now provided by thousands of health professionals. Many are lifelong residents from southwest Michigan; however, a large number have also come to Borgess from throughout the U.S. and the world. They all continue the 120-year-old legacy of caring begun by the Sisters of St. Joseph.