New Date: February 19, 7:30-8:30 in the Apple Community Room (Garrett Sports Complex)
Emeritus Professor of History Donald Housley

The Origins of the Geisinger Health System: Opportunities and Anomalies

At the turn of the twentieth century the hospital movement in America intensified. In Sunbury the Mary Packer Hospital was created in 1895; in Bloomsburg the Joseph Ratti Hospital was established in 1905; and in 1915 the George F. Geisinger Memorial Hospital was founded. The first two remain community hospitals; the latter was the kernel from which grew the Geisinger Health System, which serves over 2 million people in 31 counties in central and northeastern Pennsylvania. Why the difference? This lecture will begin to answer this question by looking at the opportunities all of these hospitals had one hundred years ago and by sketching some of the anomalous features of the George F. Geisinger Memorial Hospital as it began.