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Local Voices

Shriners Hospital celebrates 90th anniversary this week

Hospital plans a summer “homecoming” for patients

Shriners Hospitals for Children – St. Louis celebrates its 90th anniversary on April 8, 2014.  The temptation – and the tradition – is to “take a look back” during an anniversary milestone.  Not this year. 

“There are just too many exciting things on the horizon to spend our time looking backwards,” says John Gloss, FACHE, administrator.  “We’re a little over the halfway point in the construction of our new facility, and this time next year, we’ll be moving to the campus of Washington University School of Medicine.”

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Staff and Shriners leadership are currently planning for the transition to the new hospital, and while it’s a huge undertaking, it is not expected to be as dramatic as the hospital’s move from the city of St. Louis to its current location in Frontenac in 1963. During that move, volunteers from Scott Air Force Base were called in to help move dozens of children who were confined to their hospitals beds in various stages of recovery from orthopaedic surgeries.

“Next year, we’ll be able to plan our surgeries and our inpatient stays around our move,” said Gloss. “In the 1960s, children were admitted up to two weeks prior to their surgeries and stayed in our hospital for a minimum of 45 days up to more than a year for their recoveries.  Today, the majority of our patients go back home the day of their surgery.”

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The new facility will certainly be an upgrade from the current one, which has served the hospital well for the past 51 years, with only one renovation during that time.

“Some areas of the hospital still very much have a 1960’s-era feel,” Gloss said. “Shriners Hospital is a world’s leader in pediatric orthopaedic treatment – as well as in having a family-centered, warm environment for our patients. Our patients often consider the hospital home and our staff like family.  “However our physical environment doesn’t always reflect that.”  The renovation project is not simply aesthetic, but will improve the facility to insure that we are prepared for present and future medical & technological advancements. 

All of this focus on the future is not to say that people aren’t proud of the hospital’s history.

“We’ve been able to vastly improve the lives of more than 100,000 children in our 90-year history – and we’ve done it all whether or not families have the ability to pay,” Gloss says. “The advancements our physicians have pioneered the field of pediatric orthopaedics – and the standards in family-centered care that we have set in those 90 years have only served to inspire us to greater heights.”

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