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In 1873, members of the Lycoming Medical Society along with 23 leading citizens, petitioned the Lycoming County Court to establish the Williamsport Hospital. When it opened, it would serve nine patients in a former boarding house at the corner of Edwin and Elmira streets.
Now, 150 years later, UPMC Williamsport is an accredited level two trauma center and offers 224 beds, 22 bassinets, 24-hour emergency care and complete inpatient-outpatient and surgical care services.
A brief history of the hospital was given by state Sen. Eugene Yaw, during the hospital system's annual meeting this week. Yaw attended the virtual meeting and read a citation from the state Senate commending the hospital on reaching the milestone.
He shared that following a flood in 1889, construction began on a three-acre plot of land known as Old Oaks Park and that less than 40 years later in 1926, the Williamsport Hospital had a capacity of 93 adults, 28 infants and a children's ward. It also included five operating rooms and two delivery rooms. The hospital opened the first intensive care unit in the central part of the state in 1963, followed by paramedic services in the late 1970s.
The growth of the healthcare system continued when Williamsport Hospital joined with Divine Providence and Muncy Valley hospitals to form the Susquehanna Health System which then became part of UPMC in 2016.
Looking back over changes during the past year and looking at what's to come in the new year. Patty Jackson-Gehris, president of UPMC Williamsport and UPMC in North Central PA, said, "to extend God's healing love by providing extraordinary patient experience is what we are all about."
"So much has changed in the last few years as we innovate to meet the healthcare needs of the people we serve," she said.
Some of the programs at the hospital cited by Jackson-Gehris included the level two trauma program which has served over 1,300 people each year; the Hillman Cancer Center, the breast health and the Gatehouse at the Divine Providence campus; and the state's first outpatient emergency department at the Lock Haven campus.
"This transformation of the Lock Haven campus has allowed us to continue to provide high quality emergency care, along with outpatient services and physician practices, keeping access to UPMC care in Clinton County," she said.
"We continue to attract top physicians and providers to our community. This year so far we have brought 37 new physicians and 40 advanced practice professionals to our community. This has allowed us to expand care for women, heart and vascular neurosurgery, orthopedics, gastroenterology and primary care just to highlight a few,"Jackson-Gehris said.
In addition to the family medicine residency program, the hospital has just added a rural residency program in Tioga and Potter counties, to "allow us to highlight the health needs and opportunities to practice medicine in our beautiful part of the state. These wonderful rural communities we get to call home," Jackson-Gehris said.
Our residency program is training the talented providers who will take care of us for many years to come, hopefully for that next 150 years," she added.
As one of the largest employers in the area, Jackson-Gehris cited the hospital's work it is doing "around diversity equity and inclusion in our community."
"We're proud that we have increased our person of color hires by over 25% so far this year. We implemented a new leader orientation helping us to grow and retain the leadership talent that we have. We are investing in our workforce and we're bringing that workforce to North Central PA," she said.
"We also listened to our community and we knew we had to make it easier to access our jobs. So we began holding something we call our Find Your Fit career fair. We go out into the community where we talk with people and we help them to understand career options available and navigate the application process," Jackson-Gehris said.
They have also established a Military and Veterans Resource Group to focus on employees who have served and how they can improve access to health care for veterans.
During the meeting, Tony Bixby, director of Pre-Hospital service for North-Central PA region, talked about the program "Minutes Matter", which focuses on emergency care in the community.
"We know in an emergency, minutes do matter. Sometimes it's those initial few moments that can be the most critical to the survivability and the improved outcomes of our patients. And despite how good our EMS team is here in the North Central Region, we know that we can't do it alone, and that we need to utilize those in our community to help improve those outcomes," Bixby said.
"It's important that we train our community to feel comfortable to step in and help until our teams arrive," he said of this community outreach program.
Jackson-Gehris also highlighted some of the what's ahead at UPMC Williamsport.
"We will be unveiling the second phase of our state of the art physical medicine and rehab unit early next year. In addition, we're working on construction and renovation projects for orthopedic trauma, our clinical laboratory and surgical services. In the future we're going to be expanding our community and ambulatory service offerings and will provide more care in the home through community medicine and telemedicine programs," she said.
"UPMC in North Central PA will continue to partner with each of you to understand the health care needs of our region, and we will grow and innovate to meet those needs. Life changing medicine is defined in many ways. From preventative screenings to routine care to the most advanced surgical care UPMC will continue to improve the lives of every member of our community," she said.
Carrie Kurtz, director of Community Relations for the North Central Region, detailed the information that had been gathered from the community health needs assessment conducted last year to "identify those action and implementation plans to help improve the overall health of the communities that we serve."