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KEOKUK – It was quiet outside. Blessings Health Keouk On Friday in the hours he arrives Permanent closure on Saturday at 12:01.
The 49-bed nonprofit hospital’s 151 employees spent the past few days cleaning personal belongings. Patients stopped showing up at 1 a.m. Traffic in and out the door was able to pull to a trickle.
“It’s sad,” said Denise Stutz of Keokuk. “It’s not registering well. … We said goodbye.”
In the year She said States had been working there since 2006, when she was last released from the hospital. But, like many Keokuk residents, her history with the building goes back much further.
“A lot of people were born here,” she said. “I was born here.”
States remembers her mother telling her about a nurse, Linda, who sent her to Iowa City for a month in the neonatal intensive care unit because she was so helpful and nice. She understood the importance of a hospital to help with those first emergencies.
One example of the loss for Keokuk residents came Friday, when Missy Guymon walked out of the ER with her son, Dylan, 12, who was injured on the soccer field.
Come back.
“Looks like we’re driving to Fort Madison,” Guymon said.
“It’s the end,” Dylan said before considering the idea of getting ice cream on the way home.
Kekuk residents needing emergency care now have to travel: ‘It’s a bit disappointing’
While urgent care and family practice options remain in Keokuk, the hospital’s closing leaves the town of 9,900 without an emergency room, forcing those who need them to travel 17 miles to Carthage, Illinois, or 18 miles to Southeast Iowa Regional Medical. The center’s Fort Madison campus.
“It’s a friendship,” Stutz said. “It’s the community that has hurt me.”
Kelsey Hardy, an emergency room registrar, went outside for a break to see signs that the emergency room had been evacuated. She described the atmosphere in the hospital as “very polite”.
“It’s the last day, and we were talking about the memories,” Hardy said. “It’s a little annoying. It’s just sad.”
Blessing Health announced it will close the hospital on September 1, 2010. According to Blessing CEO Maureen Kahn, it has been serving an average of one and a half patients a day and 22-24 ER patients.
More:‘Keokuk’s biggest challenge’: Hospital closures leave city looking for emergency care solutions
Cathy Hall, head of rural hospitals at Blessing Health, said rural hospitals operate on thin margins, can lose weight quickly and are heavily impacted by payer mix.
“When you get a swing of one or two patients, I know it doesn’t seem like much, but it’s really important,” Hall told Hawkeye in an earlier interview. “It can mean the difference between a successful month and a successful month.”
The hospital’s financial situation, which had been in trouble for more than a decade, was exacerbated by the condition of the building. A third-party assessment found it needed up to $20 million in work.
The history of the hospital dates back to 1886
Blessing purchased Keokuk Hospital from Unity Point Health in 2021 and Keokuk Area Hospital in 2016.
Although the hospital building was built in 1981, its history is based on two hospitals, the oldest of which was opened on April 28, 1886, when St. Joseph’s Hospital began offering 15-bed services outside the city limits at the invitation of Keokuk. College of Medicine. It received additions in 1865, 1904, 1918 and 1929 and moved to 14th and Exchange streets. The main building was replaced in 1960.
More:Blessing Health to close Kekuk Hospital, clinic-based services will remain
Meanwhile, Mercy Hospital began in 1892 as a partnership with Keokuk College of Physicians and Surgeons before becoming WC Graham Protestant Hospital in 1901 when it moved seven blocks from the St. Joseph campus to 15th and Fulton streets.
In 1914, the Women’s Home Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church took over the management of WC Graham and changed its name to Graham Protestant Hospital in 1929. In 1941, it was incorporated as the Graham Hospital Association and served as a non-profit organization until September 30, 1975. .
Graham Hospital and St. Joseph’s merged on October 1, 1975 to form a hospital in the Keokuk area.
Hawkeye reporter Michael Niehaus contributed to this report.
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