Installment No. 37: Here comes the (population) boom
Today’s artifact: An original program from the 1958 dedication of the first expansion of St. Tammany Parish Hospital.
Why it is significant: From the beginning, St. Tammany Parish Hospital’s commitment to the community has been clear: to minister to the healthcare needs of its Northshore neighbors, come rain or shine – or population boom.
Those first two would prove easy enough to handle. But the population growth? That would be a little trickier.
By the time the hospital marked its second anniversary in 1956, it was clear its original 30 beds wouldn’t be enough to properly fulfill its mission. Consequently, talk quickly turned to expansion.
Two years after that, as the hospital was celebrating its fourth anniversary, it also christened a brand-new, $75,000 wing, adding 15 beds – a 50% increase in inpatient capacity.
Also part of the new wing: a new nursery and nurses station; a dedicated pediatric ward; and various bells and whistles such as a new PBX system that put private telephones in every room; a plaster cast room; and an Executone intercom system connecting patient rooms with nursing stations.
It couldn’t have come at a better time. By then, the bursting-at-the-seams hospital boasted an average daily patient count of 31.1 – nearly double the 15.6 daily patient average in its first year. At one point, the original 30-bed hospital found itself housing 50 inpatients at once.
Its workforce surged even more dramatically, going from an original 18 employees to 75 by the time the 1958 wing was dedicated.
Presciently, that new wing was designed in such a way as to make further expansion possible. It would prove handy. The 1958 wing represented the hospital’s first expansion, but it was by no means the last.
As the local population boomed, the hospital grew along with it. Within a decade, in 1968, the hospital had doubled its bed count again, this time to 61 beds. Additional expansions were unveiled with regularity, including in 1974, 1978, 1996, 2004, 2011, 2016 and 2021.
In fact, that growth continues, both on the hospital’s main campus, which is at this writing undergoing a kitchen and support services expansion, as well as off-campus, with the addition this year of a primary clinic in North Covington, an Ambulatory Surgery Center on Bootlegger Road and other facilities.
“When you look back at what was here even in the early ’80s … it was an unassuming two-story hospital with a very small footprint. You really didn’t know unless you saw the signage that it was a hospital,” STHS President and CEO Joan Coffman said in reflecting on the hospital’s growth in 2021. “Now, today, not only do we have the extraordinary new wing coming online, but we have a much bigger footprint out in the community, because we wanted to make sure over time that we were able to truly meet the needs where they are.
“And I think we’ve done a great job of that over the years.”
Do you have a St. Tammany Parish Hospital story or item to share? We’d love to hear about it! Email us at CommDept@stph.org.
Next week – Installment No. 38: A tradition is born
Last week – Installment No. 36: What’s cookin’?