St. Francis Hospitals celebrate national award,
new cardiac center
By Mary Ann Wyand
The Sisters of St. Francis of Perpetual Adoration are grateful to God and their patron saint for many blessings that have resulted in state-of-the-art health care improvements at their hospitals in Beech Grove, Indianapolis and Mooresville.
The sisters and staff members of the Franciscan hospitals in central Indiana have had much to celebrate in recent weeks.
St. Francis Hospital and Health Centers was named one of the nation’s “100 Top Hospitals” on Feb. 28 by Solucient, a health care business intelligence company, for excellence in quality of care, operational efficiency, financial performance and responsiveness to the community.
The award was the result of Solucient’s “National Benchmarks for Success” study, which was published in the Feb. 28 edition of Modern Healthcare magazine.
St. Francis was one of only three hospitals in the state and the only central Indiana hospital to receive this national recognition.
“Because of their hard work, all of our employees, physicians, volunteers, board members and other members of the St. Francis family deserve this recognition for consistently performing at an exceptional level and leading the way in health care for the communities we serve,” said Robert J. Brody, president and chief executive officer of St. Francis Hospital and Health Centers.
On Feb. 25, the sisters and staff also celebrated the completion of a new state-of-the-art Cardiac and Vascular Care Center at the St. Francis Hospital campus at 8111 S. Emerson Ave. in Indianapolis.
Hospital officials said the four-story, 240,000-square-foot center with six operating rooms, 107 beds and “cutting edge” surgical, diagnostic and treatment facilities is the only full-service cardiac and vascular care hospital on the south side of Indianapolis.
The cardiac care center began accepting patients on March 15. Catheterization labs are equipped with the new Phillips Flat Detector system, the latest digital coronary imaging technology.
Acknowledging that it’s been “a historic year” for St. Francis Hospital and Health Centers, Brody said during a Feb. 25 interview that recent improvements and successes are “all about anticipating what is going to be the next need down the road.”
Brody said the cardiac care facility was “constructed in a manner that is actually going to be much more efficient for us and allow us to deliver care more cost-effectively” for heart patients diagnosed with a variety of health care needs.
“Cardiac and vascular disease is the number one killer in our society,” he said. “The medical staff is superb, and we have designed a facility that meets their current needs and anticipates the needs into the future. The equipment is absolutely state-of-the-art and our staff that supports the physicians in the care of our patients are the best. …They receive continual training [with] the equipment.”
According to statistics from the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control, 28 percent of all deaths in Indiana were caused by heart disease in 2002.
Last week, the Sisters of St. Francis and hospital staff members also celebrated the addition of new computer-aided magnetic resonance imaging technology used to detect breast cancer.
Franciscan Sister Jane Marie Klein, chairperson of the board of the Sisters of St. Francis Health Services based in Mishawaka, Ind., said on Feb. 25 that the sisters “have been doing God’s work in health care in the United States, starting in Lafayette, Ind., since 1875, almost 130 years. God has certainly blessed us.”
Sister Jane Marie said the Franciscan hospital chain’s many successes can be attributed to God’s blessings and the sisters who take turns praying before the Blessed Sacrament 24 hours a day every day of the year.
“Our true powerhouse is perpetual adoration,” she said. “That’s our primary apostolate, and it’s only because of the [continual] prayers that … everyone is able to carry on the work and to grow and to be visionaries to see what the needs of the communities are and to respond to them.
“We have miracles happen every day in our hospitals,” Sister Jane Marie said. “The ministry of prayer keeps us all going. We’re blessed, truly blessed. We have wonderful laity of all faiths working in our hospitals. You don’t have to be Catholic to work here. You just have to buy into and uphold our values and our mission.”
St. Francis Hospital and Health Centers was founded in 1914 by the Franciscan sisters, whose motherhouse is located in Mishawaka, Ind. It is one of the largest health care systems in Indiana, with three hospitals in Beech Grove, Indianapolis and Mooresville, and is part of a network of 12 hospitals in Indiana and Illinois that are owned and operated by the Sisters of St. Francis Health Services Inc. †
