Saint Francis Hospital and Medical Center has come a long way since 1897, when the Sisters of Saint Joseph of Chambéry overcame near-impossible odds to open a two-room hospital in Hartford’s Asylum Hill neighborhood.  The new hospital offered a refuge for immigrants who wanted to know that their faith and traditions would be understood and appreciated if they ever needed inpatient care.

From the beginning, Saint Francis served on the front lines against outbreaks of then-deadly infectious diseases, from typhoid fever to influenza and later polio. At the same time, Saint Francis doctors were quick to recognize that improving health required more than clinical work, and the first research laboratory opened in 1902, the same year that tuberculosis was reaching epic proportions in Hartford and across the United States.

Typhoid to High-Tech

While better sanitation, vaccines and antibiotics have tamed many of the early killers, Saint Francis is even busier today, tackling the healthcare threats and ailments of the modern world with technology and medical interventions that the founding sisters could not even imagine. But the very tenets upon which the hospital was founded – clinical excellence coupled with compassionate caring – have never changed.

In 1990, Saint Francis affiliated with Mount Sinai Hospital, a Jewish-sponsored institution that opened in 1923. Mount Sinai was born of a vision similar to the one that led to the founding of Saint Francis decades earlier. The collaboration marked the first recorded instance of a Catholic and Jewish hospital affiliation in United States history. The arrangement was formalized as a corporate merger in 1995.

As the needs of Connecticut residents evolve, so does Saint Francis. In 2011, the John T. O’Connell Tower opened its doors. Ten stories high, the tower features a new emergency department with 70 treatment areas, 13 sheltered ambulance bays, and a rooftop helipad. The upper floors are home to 19 new operating rooms and 135 private patient rooms, including two floors dedicated to orthopedics.

From a fledgling hospital with 32 patients in a ward, Saint Francis has grown into New England’s largest Catholic hospital, with 617 licensed inpatient beds, 65 bassinets, and five centers of excellence that embrace patients at every stage of lifetime.