Skaggs hospital gears up for next 55 years

Choosing to preserve history rather than tear down the building, officials decided to relocate Skaggs’ administrative offices and develop a 29-bed unit with 13 inpatient rehabilitation beds.

The work is a symbol of the community’s growth – the same community that owns Skaggs.

Started Jan. 8, 1950, as a community-owned hospital following a large private donation, the hospital now has more than 100 beds, 1,000 employees and $230 million in 2004 revenues.

And with an eye to the future, the administration anticipates more of the same.

“We expect growth to continue,” said Bob D. Phillips, Skaggs administrator/CEO. “We estimate that we grew 47 percent in the last 10 years. The Branson Landing opening will give another spurt of population growth and job growth.”

Starting it all

Such lofty numbers might come as a surprise to the hospital’s deceased founders, Marion B. and Estella Skaggs. Marion B. Skaggs started the prosperous Safeway grocery stores, and when the couple was living in eastern Taney County, they inspired the community to raise funds for a local hospital.

“(Skaggs) became aware of a child who died on the way to Springfield and he challenged the community,” Phillips said. “The community responded.”

With the Skaggs’ encouragement and financial support, construction began in 1948. Two years later, the 25-bed hospital opened its doors. The hospital, built at a cost of about $250,000, was turned over to the community as a gift. The Skaggs donated an additional $50,000 to supplement community donations. Since that time, area citizens have continued to financially support the not-for-profit hospital.

Perhaps most generous is the estate of St. Louis businessman L.W. Hyer. Hyer, who once owned the largest individual portion of J.C. Penney stock, left 5 percent of his estate to the hospital upon his death in 1956.

Although he never saw the completed hospital, Hyer’s estate has generated more than $6 million for Skaggs over the years.

Building Skaggs

Skaggs’ modern day development followed Branson’s boom years.

It began with the remodel of the Skaggs Medical Building in 1988 and continued after the Horizons 2000 campaign, which raised $7 million for a 67,000-square-foot project. Within the next few years, the hospital had a new critical care unit, emergency room, parking garage and conference rooms.

In 2000, the $20 million Skaggs Outpatient Center opened. A four-story parking garage opened in 1999. In addition, Skaggs has opened 19 satellite medical clinics in Branson, Branson West, Forsyth and Kimberling City.

Today, the campus consists of medical plazas I and II, the main hospital and ER, the outpatient center and administrative building now under renovation.

“We have 132 beds and we serve all of Stone and Taney counties as well as adjoining counties in Missouri and Arkansas,” Phillips said.

Once renovations are complete, Skaggs will have capacity for 192 beds. There are plans in three to four years to add another five-story bed tower with capabilities for another four stories. And in two years, Skaggs hopes to add a cancer center.

Phillips said that in the last five years, the hospital has grown from 56 active full-time medical staff to 116 and from 738 employees to 1,039 – Branson’s largest employer, according to the Branson Lakes Area Chamber of Commerce. During that time, revenues have increased from $90 million to $231 million.

With 8 million visitors to the tourist town last year, Phillips estimates that tourists make up nearly 60 percent of ER patients during the tourist season. Locally, the hospital serves Branson’s 6,050 residents and the 70,000 living in the entire service area.

Building programs

“When I got here in 1996, we conducted surveys to see what services are needed and where patients were going. Over 50 percent were going to Arkansas, St. Louis, Kansas City and Springfield,” Phillips said. “We identified those areas, recruited physicians and built programs.”

Cardiac care has been the main focus, mainly through a 2001 partnership with the highly rated Washington University School of Medicine cardiac program.

Although pediatric heart surgery and heart transplants are not available, the reputation of the hospital’s cardiac program has attracted patients from outside Skaggs’ service area.

Branson resident Susan Caruso brought her father, Raymond Ostrander, to Skaggs last fall for his second bypass surgery in less than two years. When the first surgery, performed in south Florida, didn’t provide satisfactory results, Caruso convinced her father to have a second surgery at Skaggs, near family.

“At Skaggs, the operation was performed correctly,” Caruso said. “We chose Dr. Paul Robison to perform his operation and are so grateful for his expertise. I have been a patient at Skaggs myself. I think in the past few years they have brought in some excellent physicians.”

On the technology end, Skaggs is one of 10 hospitals in the country partnering with General Electric to increase efficiency by reducing paperwork for nurses and giving physicians access to records and test results at home. The hospital will have eliminated paper records and replaced them with computerized tablets, laptops and a computer in every patient room by 2007. “It will reduce costs and errors,” Phillips added.

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