Butler Memorial Hospital: A timeline
The 326-bed Butler Memorial Hospital has numerous outpatient locations and more than 50 primary and specialty physician offices throughout Butler, Armstrong, Clarion, Indiana, Lawrence, Mercer and Venango counties which make up Butler Health System. Here is a look at the history of Butler Memorial from its earliest origins more than 100 years ago to Wednesday’s announcement about a planned merger with Excela Health.
1898: After the primitive medical care in Butler County provided by midwives, folk remedies and the rare doctor, the first hospital building in Butler County was completed with money raised from a fund drive by the Ladies' Hospital Association.
1901: The hospital adds the nurses training school.
1918: The hospital faces the crisis of the 1918 influenza pandemic. By October, there were 2,000 Spanish flu cases in the city alone.
1920: The hospital board of directors and the chamber of commerce establishes a committee to raise $500,000 for a new building. The hospital board of trustees bought 10 acres on the summit of a hill within city limits and started a second fundraising campaign.
Feb. 18, 1925: The new Butler County Memorial Hospital officially opens.
May 1931: The Great Depression almost forces the hospital to close because of an ongoing monthly deficit of $2,000 caused by increased charity patients and inadequate state funding.
The board of directors starts a campaign that raises more than $25,000 to cover the hospital's deficit.
1938: The hospital builds Sarver Hall to house nursing students and their classes.
1948: The hospital begins a building fund to expand and renovate the original building.
1954: The hospital expansion is completed, include a new wing; Nixon Hall, a 64-room nurses' dormitory; an outpatient clinic; an X-ray department; and a four-bed emergency room.
1970: The hospital adds an intensive care unit.
1972: A north wing is added, increasing the number of hospital beds to 356.
1974: The last class graduates from the hospital’s nurses’ training program, which became a victim of economic problems.
1980s: New medical technology leads to the creation of a new main wing featuring spacious laboratory and X-ray areas.
1985: Angiography and neurosurgery services and laser surgery introduced.
1991: The hospital establishes the Transitional Care Facility, a 25-bed unit that provides skilled nursing care for patients ready for hospital discharge but not yet ready to go home.
1992: The cardiac catheterization lab opens, and Butler Medical Associates, a multi-physician practice specializing in family and general internal medicine, begins as an extension to the hospital.
1993: The Pain Management Center opens, and the hospital also begins a geriatric psychiatry program.
1994: The Sleep Center opens.
1998: The Heart Center opens. By November 1999, the center was the site of more than 300 open heart surgeries.
1999: The Women's Imaging Center opens, offering mammography and other breast cancer tests.
2007: The hospital begins building what would become its East Campus at the intersection of Route 422 and Route 68.
2010: The Tower section containing three new operating rooms and an intensive care unit opens at the hospital.
2013: Butler Memorial Hospital becomes one of the few hospitals in Western Pennsylvania to offer endovascular neurosurgery to diagnose and treat various conditions and diseases of the central nervous system.
2015: Palliative care medicine is introduced.
2016: The TAVR program — transcatheter aortic valve replacement as an alternative to open-heart surgery — is introduced.
2017: The hospital begins robotic surgery.
2019: Butler Health System is part of a merger that brings Clarion Hospital into its health system.
March 26, 2020: Butler Health System reports its first patient death from the coronavirus.
Nov. 10, 2020: Butler Health System reports the highest incidence of COVID-19 cases since the beginning of the pandemic. In addition to four deaths over the weekend, the hospital reports treating 26 inpatients for COVID-19 symptoms with 20 of them having confirmed cases of the virus. Four of the hospitalized patients are treated in the intensive care unit.
May 2021: The long history of the Butler County Memorial Hospital Nurses' Alumnae Association comes to an end. The 100-year-old organization leaves behind plans for a scholarship and a showcase of student nurse memorabilia, located in the main tower of Butler Memorial Hospital, between the glass doors and the Nixon-Sarver Education Center. The cabinet and its contents are a reminder of the hospital’s nursing school, which was open from 1901 to 1974 and produced 1,143 graduates of its three-year course.
June 1, 2022: Butler Health System announces intentions to merge with Excela Health of Westmoreland County.
SOURCE: “The History of Medicine in Butler County” by Jean B. Purvis, Butler Eagle archives
