History

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MeritCare Morsels

  • The minutes of the original meeting at Drs. Sand and Tronnes' offices were written in Norwegian by Pastor S. Romsdahl.
  • Planners for St. Luke's Hospital originally considered the property where Oak Grove Lutheran High School now stands, but decided that Broadway offered more suitable conditions.
  • The MeritCare campus was once part of a baseball park used by the old Northern League.
  • In 1908, the price of a ward bed at St. Luke's Hospital was $8.00 per week, with a $2.00 discount for stockholders and their dependents.
  • Sixteen-year-old Minnie Stoa of Buxton, N.D., became the first patient treated at St. Luke's Hospital, when she was rushed there for an emergency appendectomy on February 25, 1908—in the midst of opening festivities! Drs. Sand and Tronnes performed the operation and then had to perform another emergency appendectomy immediately after Miss Stoa's surgery. Both patients survived and recovered well. Because of these emergencies, Drs. Sand and Tronnes were forced to miss the hospital's opening services.
  • The Hospital averaged 24 patients/day the first year. Within a decade, that number had doubled to 48.
  • When a tornado destroyed 16 square blocks of North Fargo on June 20, 1957, St. Luke's Hospital lay only four blocks from the tornado's path. In the hours and days following the storm, 141 people were treated at St. Luke's.
  • St. Luke's experienced its first internal "flood" on March 23, 1977, when a water main on 4 West ruptured. Four inches of water soon covered the floor and began running down the elevator shaft. Twenty-six patients had to be relocated, and ceilings and carpets were drenched as far down as the basement. Clean-up took several hours and the help of all available personnel.
  • Stats from 1948:
    • 129 beds & 18 bassinets
    • 6,149 patients admitted
    • 861 babies born
    • 3,615 operations performed
    • 1,776 patients treated in ER
    • 41 first-year students admitted to the nursing school
    • 45 students graduated
    • 98 students enrolled at year's end
    • 3 doctors in the intern training program
    • 4 doctors in the resident training program
    • 60 doctors on the medical staff
    • 138 people employed full-time