Lima, Ohio - Medical Care

Medical Care

The first doctor in Allen County, Samuel Jacob Lewis, was assigned to duty at Fort Amanda in 1812.

Lima has been a regional medical center since its earliest days. Currently, the city's two hospitals serve a 10-county area of northwest and west central Ohio. St. Rita's Medical Center, a level 2 trauma center, with nearly 4,000 employees as of June 2006, is Allen County's largest employer while Lima Memorial Health System ranks third. In 2005, St. Rita's embarked on a $130 million expansion expected to create up to 500 more jobs, this new addition is known as "The Medical Center of the Future".

The Roman Catholic Church Sisters of Mercy opened St. Rita's in December 1918, in the midst of a national (and global) influenza epidemic. Since then, the hospital has grown dramatically, with major expansions launched in 1945 and 1967. The hospital has also created satellite facilities in the surrounding towns of Ottawa, Delphos and Wapakoneta. SRMC also houses a separate hospital with the walls of the main facility. This "interior" facility, "Triumph", was implemented to serve poverty-level citizens who are unable to afford continuing care otherwise. In July 2008, St. Rita's Medical Center purchased Lima Allen County Paramedics. Lima Allen County Paramedics was established in 1964 and since then has been a vital private emergency and non-emergency ambulance service in the area.

Lima Memorial Health System, formerly Lima Memorial Hospital, a level 2 trauma center, can trace its roots to 1899, when it began as Lima City Hospital. Formed by the Pastors Union of Lima, the 13-bed facility was the first community hospital in northwest Ohio. During the Great Depression, the city of Lima helped to finance a larger hospital, which opened on Memorial Day 1933 on the city's east side. The region's first open-heart surgery was performed at Lima Memorial on April 22, 1997. In 1999 LMHS entered into a Joint venture with Blanchard Valley Health Association ("BVHA") and ProMedica Health System. Lima Memorial Health System is currently undergoing an extensive remodel phase. The eight story patient tower is being converted to all private rooms, and all cardiac services will be combined to one area. A new surgery center is under construction at this time, and the installation a level 2 neonatal ICU is in the works.

For decades, Lima also had two other hospitals with strikingly different missions. The Ottawa Valley Hospital, which opened in 1909 as the District Tuberculosis Hospital, was one of the first in the state dedicated to the treatment of tubercular patients. The hospital treated patients from seven to 90 years old, at a time when tuberculosis was nearly always fatal. The average stay was three to five years. As treatment improved, the hospital closed, though the building was used until 1973.

A longer and stranger history is attached to the facility originally known as the Lima State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. Situated on 628 acres (2.54 km2) three miles (5 km) north of downtown Lima, the hospital was constructed between 1908 and 1915. Built at a cost of $2.1 million, it was the largest poured-concrete structure in the country until supplanted by the Pentagon.

For much of its history, Lima State Hospital functioned largely as a warehouse. Patients sometimes staged dramatic protests against the conditions of their confinement, and frequently escaped (more than 300 escapes by 1978). Conditions improved significantly after 1974 as a result of a class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of the patients. In a landmark ruling, US District Judge Nicholas J. Walinski spelled out detailed requirements for assuring each patient's rights to "dignity, privacy and human care." In its last years, the state hospital was used for the filming of a made-for-television movie about the Attica Prison riots in New York.

Starting in 1982, Lima State Hospital became a medium-security prison, the Lima Correctional Institution. The prison closed in 2004, though a smaller prison on the site, the Allen Correctional Institution, remains.