History of University Hospital

COLUMBIA — Originally a tan brick building sitting on an empty expanse of land on the edge of MU, University Hospital has since grown to include a health care network with five hospital facilities and many specialty clinics.

Now known as MU Health Care, the original University of Missouri Medical Center was built primarily to provide a facility to introduce a new four-year degree program for MU medical students to replace the existing two-year bachelor’s program. Hugh Stephenson Jr., a surgeon and Hickman High School graduate, joined others to lobby the Missouri General Assembly to choose Columbia as the location for a new hospital.

Stephenson and other collaborators were able to convince the General Assembly to allocate $13 million for a medical complex at MU. Completed in 1956, the building included a seven-story main hospital with an emergency room and outpatient care. McHaney Hall, which was built as a nurses’ dormitory, and the Medical Sciences Building were also part of the medical complex.

According to the 2007 annual report, MU Health Care plans to complete the first phase, a $220 million facilities expansion, of a three-phase plan that will renovate Children’s Hospital and move Ellis Fischel Cancer Center to an on-campus location, along with other building projects, by July 2011.

Since its start, MU Health Care has grown to include University Hospital, Missouri Rehabilitation Center, Rusk Rehabilitation Center, Columbia Regional Hospital, Ellis Fischel Cancer Center and Children’s Hospital, among other partners. With 537 physicians and 5,251 other staff members, MU Health Care is the second largest employer in Columbia, after MU.

Jeffrey Hoelscher, MU Health Care’s media coordinator, said he thinks part of the health care demand is the result of a longer lifespan.

“We anticipate growing demands for health care by an aging population,” Hoelscher said. “People today are living longer, and diseases such as cancer that were once fatal now are managed as chronic diseases.”

University Hospital expects that Columbia’s population, which was estimated by the U.S. Census Bureau to be 88,534 in 2003, will increase to an estimated 100,000 people over the next five years. Because the average lifespan is expected to lengthen, Columbia’s baby boomer population will increase about 9 percent in the next five years, from around 8,700 to a little more than 9,500, Hoelscher said.

“People are more active than they were 30 to 40 years ago,” he said.

This projected patient growth, he suggested, also takes into account the problem of obesity and smoking rates, both of which are high in Missouri.

Because the number of patients is gradually rising, MU Health Care has been putting together a plan for expansion and rearranging the locations of different departments under the MU Health Care name. The 274-bed hospital is adding another parking garage and a new patient care tower where Ellis Fischel Cancer Center will relocate.

Describing the 1956 building as “state of the art” for its time, Hoelscher also knows that what worked for the hospital before might not please its current patients. For example, shared and semi-private rooms were the norm 50 years ago.

“Nowadays, people want and expect to have private rooms,” he said, explaining one of the reasons for building the new patient care tower.

What has worked for the hospital, however, is its ambulance service, which was established in 1968.
Hoelscher said the first ambulance was a large van. The hospital, along with MU’s engineering department, fashioned an early emergency vehicle that became the start of one of the first ambulance services in the state.

Prior to the ambulance service, hospitals often used hearses, or people called the police to transport them to medical care. This service was created when Frank Mitchell, the first director of University Hospital’s trauma center, realized that a patient’s survival rate increased the quicker paramedics and medical support could respond.

In 1982, University Hospital started the Staff for Life helicopter service, which brings patients in rural areas and accident victims to the hospital faster than land transport. Staff for Life, the only helicopter service in central Missouri, has transported more than 26,000 patients in the past 25 years.

Aside from its transportation systems, Hoelscher thinks that what sets MU Health Care apart is its Level 1 trauma center and Children’s Hospital, both of which are unique to mid-Missouri. Because the hospital’s trauma center is equipped to treat the most badly injured patients, many of them are brought from trauma centers outside of Columbia and Boone County.

Patients brought to the trauma center who have been badly burned can receive care from the only burn unit in central Missouri. As other hospitals have eliminated burn units and beds, MU Health Care has added to its own burn unit and increased the number of beds, he said.

Children’s Hospital is built around specialists, including pediatric neurologists, orthopedists and cardiologists. Children’s Hospital also provides its own pediatric transport units with ambulances specifically designed for children.

“The units are designed so that a parent can accompany their child while still allowing technicians to move inside to provide care,” Hoelscher said. “There’s even a DVD player, so the child can watch their favorite movie en route to the hospital in order to help calm them.”

The incorporation of these services has contributed to the growth of the hospital by bringing in patients outside of Columbia looking for specialized care. MU Health Care is responding to the growth by adding 120 private rooms, and departments are shifting to maximize space and efficiency. After the final two phases are completed, the hospital will have also built an orthopedic institute, created space for more operating rooms and acquired new medical equipment.

“By the end of phase 3, the whole hospital will have been rebuilt,” Hoelscher said.