Mercy Medical Center
Encyclopedia
Mercy Medical Center is a Roman Catholic hospital
Hospital
A hospital is a health care institution providing patient treatment by specialized staff and equipment. Hospitals often, but not always, provide for inpatient care or longer-term patient stays....

 in the city of Cedar Rapids, Iowa
Cedar Rapids, Iowa
Cedar Rapids is the second largest city in Iowa and is the county seat of Linn County. The city lies on both banks of the Cedar River, north of Iowa City and east of Des Moines, the state's capital and largest city...

. The hospital is located at 10th Street SE and 8th Avenue SE. Mercy Medical Center is one of two hospitals in Cedar Rapids, the other being St. Luke's Hospital
St. Luke's Hospital (Cedar Rapids, Iowa)
St. Luke’s is a 560-bed hospital in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. It was founded in 1884 as Cedar Rapids’ first hospital and is now one of two hospitals in Cedar Rapids, the other being Mercy Medical Center. St. Luke’s emergency department treats nearly 50,000 patients each year and the most cases of trauma...

.

Mercy Medical Center has a Level III trauma center staffed by board certified physicians on a 24 hour basis. At one time both Mercy and St. Luke's were recognized as regional trauma centers. However both hospitals were unable to maintain that status due to a shortage of specialists in the community, and instead became area level trauma centers.

History

When Cedar Rapids needed hospital beds in 1900, the Sisters of Mercy established Mercy Hospital in a small house on 3rd Avenue and 6th Street SE. This 15-bed house was soon too small, and the Sisters looked for money and a site to build a larger hospital.

Two men who owned the racing rights at the county fair gave a day's racing receipts toward the proposed building. and the Sisters raised money, going from parish to parish and to nearby towns. In 1903 they were able to construct a 100-bed hospital at Mercy's present location. In subsequent years, Mercy hospital was enlarged, the Hall Radiation Center and Hallmar were added.

Recent news

On June 13, 2008; flood waters
Iowa flood of 2008
The Iowa flood of 2008 was a hydrological event involving most of the rivers in eastern Iowa beginning around June 8, 2008 and ending about July 1. Flooding continued on the Upper Mississippi River in the southeastern portion of the state for several more days...

 in the hospital's basement and power outages forced Mercy to evacuate its patients to nearby facilities unaffected by the flood (such as St. Luke's
St. Luke's Hospital (Cedar Rapids, Iowa)
St. Luke’s is a 560-bed hospital in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. It was founded in 1884 as Cedar Rapids’ first hospital and is now one of two hospitals in Cedar Rapids, the other being Mercy Medical Center. St. Luke’s emergency department treats nearly 50,000 patients each year and the most cases of trauma...

, a few blocks north located on higher ground). Within a few days the water receded and the hospital began to clean up with the assistance of Rinderknecht Construction and Ryan Companies. Within a month, the hospital announced that it had fully recovered and all services were available.

Starting in the early 1900s the facilities service model has been the "Mercy Touch." Recent upgrades, including the J. Edward Lundy Pavilion continue to enhance Mercy's longstanding service model.
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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