Moses H. Cone Memorial Hospital - History

History

Funding for a hospital began after the 1908 death of Moses H. Cone, a North Carolina magnate who founded the Cone Mills textile company. In 1911, Bertha Cone, the widow of Moses, established a trust fund that would establish a hospital to serve Greensboro and memorialize her late husband. The trust fund stated that "No patient should be refused admittance because of inability to pay.". After Bertha Cone's death in 1947, her inheritance went to the trust fund that would eventually established the hospital. Construction began in 1949 and the facility opened on February 20, 1953.

In the late 1970s, a dispute over payments after the completion of a new wing eventually reached the U.S. Supreme Court. By a 6-3 margin, the justices required the hospital to arbitrate with its contractor. The case, Moses H. Cone Memorial Hospital v. Mercury Constr. Corp., set some precedents in civil procedure, clarifying the circumstances under which a federal court can decline jurisdiction when there is a similar case in state court and when a stay may be appealed as a final judgement.

Moses Cone Hospital is the largest hospital in its four county region (Alamance, Guilford, Randolph, and Rockingham counties). The hospital is a designated Level II Trauma Center. In 2009, it sought permission from the state to expand the emergency department, construction of a north patient tower, and construct a new entrance on Church Street.

Read more about this topic:  Moses H. Cone Memorial Hospital

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    The reverence for the Scriptures is an element of civilization, for thus has the history of the world been preserved, and is preserved.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    In nature, all is useful, all is beautiful. It is therefore beautiful, because it is alive, moving, reproductive; it is therefore useful, because it is symmetrical and fair. Beauty will not come at the call of a legislature, nor will it repeat in England or America its history in Greece. It will come, as always, unannounced, and spring up between the feet of brave and earnest men.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    The history of any nation follows an undulatory course. In the trough of the wave we find more or less complete anarchy; but the crest is not more or less complete Utopia, but only, at best, a tolerably humane, partially free and fairly just society that invariably carries within itself the seeds of its own decadence.
    Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)