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Cornelius Feeley, patient, and David Cochran, physician vice president
sbj photo by wes hamilton
Cornelius Feeley, patient, and David Cochran, physician vice president

2017 Economic Impact Awards 30+ Years in Operation Finalist: Mercy Springfield Communities

Healthy Community

Posted online

Mercy Springfield Communities has become so integral to Springfield, it touches nearly every aspect of the community.

One of the largest local employers, many residents depend on it for health care and a large number of Springfieldians even were born at the organization’s East Cherokee Street hospital. Last year, Mercy’s over 10,000 co-workers discharged more than 32,000 patients.

“We are proud of the role we play in creating access to health care for all people in our community,” Mercy Springfield Communities President Dr. Alan Scarrow says via email. “Care for those in need is deeply embedded in our mission, vision and values, and we will not stray from it in our behavior.”

The nonprofit began in 1891, when three members of the Sisters of Mercy moved to Springfield to open the young town’s first hospital, following a population spike of 235 percent. The eight-room building was too small for the number of people who needed help and the sisters often walked to homes to offer care. In 1905, a 40-bed hospital was opened, and by 1952, the current main campus was built – later to be followed by many expansions, reaching 886 beds.

“With $1.6 billion in annual revenue, $700 million in payroll, and hundreds of millions spent on local vendors and outside labor, all of the leaders within Mercy feel the full financial and social responsibility we have to our patients, co-workers and communities,” Scarrow says. “Our charge as leaders and stewards of the Sisters of Mercy health ministry, for our moment in history, is to assure that it thrives in perpetuity. That means we cannot sacrifice all our tomorrows for some brief need we have today.”

The health system also trains area caregivers both in-house and through the Mercy College of Nursing and Health Sciences of Southwest Baptist University. The school currently has 750 students.

Mercy’s charity care program provided $42 million last year in care to people who could not afford their medical bills. The local health system also spent $40 million more on Medicaid patients than it received from the government and $6 million on community outreach. “What we are able to provide in charity care is directly proportional to the investment the community is willing to make in us,” Scarrow says.

Staff at Mercy also go out into the community to help individually, providing roughly 125,000 service hours last year. Scarrow says Mercy is trying to work with partners in the community to address the greater causes and effects of poverty.

“Researchers found the biggest driver of worse health in poorer populations is the subjective nature of feeling poor amongst those with plenty – to be surrounded by living-color reminders of all that being poor precludes,” he says. “In other words, the higher the income inequality in a community, the greater stress our poorest neighbors feel, the less control they feel over their lives, and the more their health suffers. 

“That is something that Mercy is not going to solve on our own and I suspect we will continue to see common community health metrics lag behind our desires until our community is able to address that issue.”

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