Saint Margaret’s Hospital

Gayle Faulkner-Kosalko September 2024

Mayor Tom McDermott called it a “travesty, driven by greed.”

The closing of St. Margaret Mercy’s (now known as “Franciscan Health Hammond”)  Hospital Emergency Room left Northwest Indiana’s largest city without hospital access for its thousands of its residents.

The Franciscan Alliance said that patient demand was low while Hammond Mayor Tom McDermott pointed out that in the last five years, the  Hammond Fire Department had brought in 27,000 patients to the 120 year old St. Margaret’s ER. 

The city had been granted an injunction ordering the hospital’s ER to remain open another 9 months until McDermott could find another provider, but the Franciscans pulled the plug on the date.

The Franciscans said with this closure, patients will be better served at their Franciscan Munster and Dyer hospitals.

McDermott said, "This organization has billions in the bank and they pay no taxes. There's a reason they pay no taxes. Part of their mission is to help poor people. But now they're running away where there are no poor people. They want to go where people are wealthy, and you know it's just -- it's really rotten."

McDermott’s opinion reflected that of the thousands of people who had been helped by the Sisters for over a hundred tears, who had hospital stays, lives saved or were born at St. Margaret’s Hospital since it opened in 1898. That’s when three Sisters of St. Francis Seraph of the Perpetual Adoration arrived by train to Hammond. They had been invited by Father H.M. Plaster, pastor of St. Joseph’s Church on Hohman Avenue.  It was said that the priest had a deep concern and love for the ill and that it had been his dream to have a hospital in Hammond.

Fr. Plaster met the nuns including Mother M. Alphonsa, Sister M. Edwarda and Sister M. Richards at the train station.  The sisters came to serve….and that they did. 

Their first act was to buy the Lautman two story gray farmhouse at 30 Clinton Avenue and the land that surrounded it.  The house had room for seven beds, and each room was blessed by Father Plaster.  Early operations took place on the kitchen table.  Later the house itself would be moved to the corner of State Line and Ogden. 

The surrounding neighborhood and the citizens of Hammond were drawn to and grateful for the six nuns who were running St. Margaret’s. Sister M. Gerharda, a nurse, Sister M. Franciscan, a cook, and Sister M. Zita had joined their original sisters.  So now with two nursing nuns, the rest of the group took care of the gardening, cooking and cleaning with special care for their patients.

Their very first patient was admitted on February 3, 1898.  He was John Stephenson, an early settler of  Hammond.  He was admitted for his broken leg by Dr. J.T. Clark.  Clark was one of six physicians  at the beginning days of the hospital.  By 1921, there would be 40 physicians associated with St. Margaret’s.

With so much physical work to be done running a hospital, the nuns brought in  individuals to whom they taught the basic tenets needed to become nurses’ aides.

At the beginning, the food that was served to the patients was prepared by the Sisters, much of it coming as community donations or brought in from the families of the patients themselves. 

Not only did the Sisters care for their hospitalized patients, but they also managed to visit the homes of the sick in the community as well.   Remember that the nuns received no payment for their work.  But the community donated what they could to help, so that by 1901, a new St. Margaret’s Hospital was built as a four-story brick building with a second building added in 1908!  Now the hospital could hold 150 people in need.

British Surgeon Joseph Lister had discovered “germ theory” for sanitizing surgery protocol as well as the modern control of infections not too long before St. Margaret’s began.  His theories guided the Sisters who all shared in the “housekeeping chores” of the first hospital. The founding Sisters had high standards not only in housekeeping but in the sterilization of instruments sheets, pillow cases etc.for their patients as Lister taught.  In the early days, the nuns actually carried water from a neighbor’s well and built fires under iron pots to boil the sheets.  In 1909 a  separate building was constructed to house power and a new laundry.

When St. Margaret’s began, there was no training or  licensing of pharmacists  so their “drug room” was run by one of the Sisters who was supervised by a doctor. Many old fashioned remedies were part of their inventory such as coal tar items and organic plants and herbs. Most had to be compounded.  But eventually, as degrees in pharmacy came about, two of the Sisters earned their R.Ph. and were some of the very first “pharmacists” recognized in this new profession.

St. Margaret’s was attuned to all of the new discoveries that were being made in the field of health care which included their adding an X-ray machine in 1915. In 1918 they established their own laboratory too. By 1919 St. Margaret’s began a separate department for Obstetrics with 10 bassinets.  That year 30 babies were born at St. Margaret’s.  In 1938 the number of bassinets increased to 50 bassinets and in 1943 there were 80 bassinets for the newborns. Later with the baby boom, the numbers dramatically increased as 1947 saw the birth of 2881 new Hammondites.  By the mid-1950’s, the hospital was averaging a little over 4,000 births per year.  

In September of 1919, during World War I, St. Margaret’s made one of their biggest contributions to Northwest Indiana when they opened their own School of Nursing. Many young women from Whiting and Robertsdale received their nursing accreditation from here. (Read St. Margaret School of Nursing on this website for more details.)    

After WWI, the Depression followed but St. Margaret’s managed to continue their expansion of departments and programs throughout those difficult years.   St. Margaret’s just kept on growing as they added a Center Wing in 1951.  Five years later, the West Wing was built with the final addition of the East Tower taking place in 1958.  Now there was room for Therapy programs kept being added such as Dialysis, Physical Therapy, Respiratory ad Pulmonary function therapy and Intensive Care units

By 1959 there was also a major change. In July of that year Mr. Crayton E. Mann became the first layman to be employed by the Sisters in an administrative capacity as he began his employment as Assistant to the Administrator Sister Doris Hodges.            

In 1963 St. Margaret Hospital embarked on a $10 million building project to make it the largest hospital in Lake County.  The decision went against two professional studies that said more beds were unnecessary.  So for the next four years, 4 millions dollars of Hospital profits went into the project itself.  While the Hospital Planning Council of Metropolitan Chicago, the official regional planning agency, suggested that the size of the project be reduced, St. Margaret’s kept spending.

EDUCATION

Education was always a primary goal of the nuns of St. Margaret’s who continually added classes.  From their early internship programs, through the Nursing School, 1962 saw a school for Medical Record Technicians.  This AMA approved school was a 10 month course.  In 1970 it reopened as a two year Associate of Science Degree program affiliated with IU.

St.  Margaret’s took advantage of what was coming in 1966 as the River Oaks, a popular new Calumet City Mall opened. St. Margaret’s Hospital opened a River Oaks Out-Patient Center.  Keeping with their goal of education, here they taught Baby Sitting courses for senior citizens deigned to help working mothers with baby sitting.  At home, a speakers’ bureau was established to provide tours and information for students interested in Health Careers. Programs are also available for local service and women's clubs.

In February, 1971 students began a new educational program offered— a one-year Respiratory Therapy Technician Certification Program. When initiated, the program was the first of its kind to be conducted in northern Indiana.

While the Hosptal had disbanded its interns and nursing programs, schools would be established in four departments of the hospital: Clinical Laboratory, Medical Record, Radiology and Respiratory Therapy and these would also be affiliated with  local univiersities. Continuing education programs would now not only include the doctors and nurses, but general service education for all departments. The community now gained an Expectant Parents’ Class, Diversified Occupations programs and an Explorer Post for high school students who were interested in the health care field.

THE STRIKES   

Hospital rates had doubled in Lake County by 1965. 

A series appeared in the TIMES by staff writer Richard High with headlines that read “Hospital Profit: Big!  He wrote that St. Margaret’s had charged patients $4 million more than the cost of their care with hospital charges.

What a contrast to  a St. Margaret’s Hospital Report that appeared in the TIMES back in 1911.  The hospital had been praised for their “first-class nursing from the sisters as 75% of their patients were either partial payment or charity cases.”  The Annual Report read “one begins to marvel at the business acumen of the Sister Superior who has been able thus far to make both ends meet.”

The unrest was with the HELP (Hospital Employees Labor Program).  Many wanted HELP to be unionized; some did not.  An incident where a worker had a knife held to her stomach by a pro-union fellow employee to back a union is just an example of the high drama that would soon be seen beginning  in March 1970.

The accused women were found innocent in City Court but HELP spokesmen accused the Hospital of  firing the nurses' aides "to scare other employes into not wanting a union."   This, in addition to the hospital’s low wages and working conditions, didn’t help.  By 1968 the average employee at St.Margaret was paid $1,900 less than employees in the other county hospitals.

On March 19 a wildcat strike took place as 51 workers demonstrated, protesting low wages, large hospital profits and the seeking of recognition.    The March strike had its violent moments. 

A woman walking into the hospital was pushed down by a demonstrator and another was socked in the jaw.  Strikers filled the parking lot and slashed tires of employees who were at work.  The dispute spilled into the streets and one man was attacked by three strikers after asking him if he was picketing.  When he said he wasn’t, they beat him up.  Delivery trucks refused to cross the picket lines.  Patients now received their meals on paper plates.

Not only was the Hospital losing its reputation thanks to journalist Richard High’s series even a member of the Hammond City Council made a motion to investigate the conditions at St. Margarets since it was experiencing “obvious problems” due to the strike which had  now reached Day 14. 

Councilman Earl Thompson, who proposed the idea, said. "It's simply an issue that there may be unhealthy conditions at the hospital with the loss of admittedly vital services."  

The  motion was not seconded.

As an April strike began, one HELP employee sitting on the floor in the lobby of the hospital, said "this is April Fool's Day,"but we ain't foolin'." A union organizer explained that there are many things to be said about the conditions at the hospital “but mainly it boils down to giving the workers a sense of dignity in their jobs." 

Admissions at the hospital dropped sharply during the April strike as  hospital workers sought union representation.

Hammond’s Judge James Richards ordered that the workers could not “strike, picket or impair the operation of the hospital in any form.” The strikers asked for a retrial and Richard denied it.   He added there were to be no reprisals for any of the workers who took part in the strike. Superintendent Sister Doris Hodges had notified 167 workers they would be fired if they did not return to work by April 8. Only a small number obeyed her order, union officials say.

The Hospital also denied what Journalist Richard High had written with the following statement in the TIMES:  "The series in the paper has been inaccurate and damaging. You know when it said we had empty beds that it was not true. You know the money mentioned was used for new facilities, equipment and remodeling. "These vicious and untrue statements should and will be corrected, since such statements not only damage the hospital but also reflect upon all of us as hospital employes."            

Later a dual appeal in the St. Margaret Hospital/nonprofessional employee dispute was heard in Oct. by the Indiana Appellate Court. Officials of HELP said the hospital had fired about 50 employees in retribution for a June wildcat strike and planned to overturn Judge Richard’s decision. On the other hand, the Hospital was there to get rid of  Richards' rulings of April 16 and May 8 which ordered a union election and a deadline for return to work for those who had participated in a spring strike.

The hospital claimed they discovered that they were “overstaffed” during the strike, determined to justify the firings. The final decision would end the dispute that lasted over 17 months.

HELP’s attorney, Mr. Gittler said that some of the April strikers have not been returned to their jobs while others were fired shortly after they were called back and some were dismissed recently for participating in a work stoppage that June.

HELP organizer Mrs. Jeanne Smith charged that about 50 HELP members were dismissed for "misconduct" in letters dated Sept. 23 from the Hospital Administration.

THE  END

“Hammond...  has areas of poverty and urban health care needs, yet the Franciscan Alliance wants to save money by demolishing 90% of the hospital,” McDermott said.

St. Margaret’s was in decline.  It was only given one star in a five star rating program by the government.  It was the lowest in quality of all the area hospitals.

The Franciscan Alliance (owners of St. Margaret’s as they all belonged to the original order of nuns,) took over the buildings and renamed it Franciscan Health Hammond.

While pie in the sky plans were made, it wasn’t long before the Alliance shared that it would now  demolish the oldest parts of the 800,000-square-foot campus, reducing it to about 85,000 square feet.

“Hammond...  has areas of poverty and urban health care needs, yet the Franciscan Alliance wants to save money by demolishing 90% of the hos- pital,” McDermott said.

Mayor McDermott marched along with community residents demonstrating against the Franciscan Alliance who had changed its original plans for the hospital. It would now  demolish the oldest parts of the 800,000-square-foot campus, reducing it to about 85,000 square feet.  Many speakers were given the chance to talk about how unfair the decision was and what a necessity the hospital was to so many of the poorer classes in the community. 

It was questioned publicly why the Franciscan chose demolition over selling the property to be repurposed.  One thought was this way no other competing health system could come in and open it to a viable hospital again.

By 2022 the Franciscans said that it could not  safely operate the Hammond facility anymore. They filed for an emergency decision in the Indianapolis Court of Appeals. Their petition stated: “As of December 31, 2022, Franciscan Alliance will be physically unable to provide on-site laboratory and pharmacy services, radiology services, respiratory care services, surgery services, wound care services, dietary services, or any of the necessary support services … “The Franciscan’s Hospital license expires Saturday, December 31, 2022. It will be unlawful — not to mention dangerous to the public — for the Franciscans to continue Hospital operations without a license.”  The Franciscans won their appeal and would proceed with ceasing all operations and closing the emergency room as of December.

The hospital for which six young nuns came to serve the community of Hammond was, after 124 years, no more.

“It’s interesting how different hospitals treat service to the poor,” McDermott said, noting that Methodist Hospital Northlake Campus is  “committed” to Gary. “Not all hospitals are like bankers.”