History
Inspired by the healing ministry of Jesus Christ, and at the behest of Ellen G. White, the Seventh-day Adventist Church first established the innovative Western Health Reform Institute in Battle Creek, Michigan in 1866, to care for the sick as well as to disseminate health instruction. Over the years, other Adventist sanitariums were established around the country. These sanitariums evolved into hospitals, forming the backbone of the Adventists' medical network.
In 1972, the church decided to centralize the management of its healthcare institutions on a regional basis and, in so doing, formed the Adventist Health System to support and strengthen Seventh-day Adventist healthcare organizations in the Southern and Southwestern regions of the United States.
Ten years later, the regional operations formed a national organization, Adventist Health System/U.S., which management called the largest not-for-profit, multi-institutional healthcare system in the United States.
Adventist Health System organizations currently operate 43 hospitals and 16 nursing homes with more than 7,000 licensed beds, care for roughly 4 million patients annually in inpatient, outpatient and emergency room visits, and employ 55,000 people.
Read more about this topic: Adventist Health System
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—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)