Ashtabula County Medical Center - History

History

The Ashtabula River Railroad Disaster on December 29, 1876 was one of the greatest train disasters in our nation’s history. The Pacific Express number 5 was traveling through Ashtabula, heading west, during a heavy snowstorm. The iron bridge that carried trains over the “gulf”, a gorge formed by the Ashtabula River, fractured in the center and the eleven cars and 159 passengers plunged seventy feet to the bottom of the gorge. There was no hospital in the County at the time. Residents soon realized that there could be future disasters, as well as other illnesses and injuries in the community – and that a local hospital was needed. The first hospital in Ashtabula was built just a few hundred yards from the bridge that failed the night of the train disaster.

ACMC began as a small emergency hospital used to care for injured railroad workers at the end of 19th century. In 1882 the Ladies Railroad Auxiliary was formed to care for the patients in this temporary hospital. In 1892 the Ladies Hospital League was organized and provided the impetus to establish a proper hospital for the people of Ashtabula. The diligent work of the league was rewarded on Feb. 12, 1902, with the organization of the Ashtabula General Hospital Association. This nonprofit corporation raised $22,538 and, on June 20, 1904, Ashtabula General Hospital opened. Shortly after the Ashtabula General Hospital opened in 1904, young women enteres its nursing-training school. With the increase in the number enrolling by the 1920's the Amelia E.Lewis Nurses' Home (currently known as the Lewis Building) opened on February 27, 1930.

In 1952, a new 150-bed hospital opened. A new wing, built in 1963, brought the hospital up to 226 beds. In 1975 the city celebrated the opening of a new two-story south wing.

In 1983 the corporate structure of Ashtabula General Hospital was reorganized, resulting in the establishment of a nonprofit parent corporation known as Ashtabula Community Health Services. The hospital became a parent-subsidiary structure, changing its name to the Ashtabula County Medical Center. In 1987 the ACMC Foundation, a program designed to help the hospital meet the challenges of the changing conditions in the health care arena, was initiated. The foundation committee members chose services that were not previously available anywhere else in the county as their campaign projects. Those projects have included the Emergency Department’s Fast Track area, a new Behavioral Medicine Unit, renovations of the Maternity Suite and the cardiac catheterization lab.

In December 2008, ACMC invested $3.5 million to bring the gold standard of diagnosing heart disease – cardiac catheterization – to the community by building the Cleveland Clinic Cardiac Catheterization Lab at ACMC. f the first Cardiac Catheterization Lab (commonly known as the Cath Lab) in Ashtabula County. ACMC provides OB/GYN care and maternity/birthing services in a newly renovated maternity unit.