St Joseph's Medical Center sits on East Washington Street in Bloomington, Illinois, and has been around since 1880, always working as a nonprofit general hospital and now part of OSF HealthCare. The place runs as a short-term acute care facility with 124 to 149 staffed beds, and you'll see they do a lot with emergency care, primary and specialty care, and hospital stays for all kinds of health conditions. People come in for heart surgery, wound care with hyperbaric oxygen, chemotherapy and radiation therapy, and they offer all sorts of diagnostic imaging like CT scans, MRI, PET, SPECT, and digital mammography, and there's a dedicated EEG unit for brain tests, which not many hospitals have. The Emergency Department is a Level II Trauma Center, and the place's got full accreditation from The Joint Commission as of 2023, which means it meets respected care standards. They're tied to the Sisters of the Third Order of St. Francis and you'll see the Franciscan values in how they try to treat everyone with care, offering a Patient Advocate and even bringing in medical interpreters if someone needs help with language when making decisions, which makes a big difference for understanding, and all the consent forms are supposed to be written at a level most people can understand.
You'll find services for a lot of needs, even with clinics like the OSF Medical Group Vein Clinic and programs for diabetes supplies, cardiac rehab, joint replacements, and wound care. They've got services for people needing home care, hospice, and infusion pharmacy, and the patient can get home medical equipment, help at home, private aides, and even telehealth or urgent care if coming in isn't possible. Folks who need serious treatment for neurology problems can get Neurohospitalist Services and neurodiagnostics, and the hospital's got a Magnet designation for nursing, which is a mark for nursing excellence. They train new doctors through a Graduate Medical Education program, and seven interns and residents get their experience here each year, bringing a teaching mindset to the hospital, and the hospital belongs to the Council of Academic Health System Executives.
Some history here-St Joseph's did the first blood transfusion, C-section, and open-heart surgery in central Illinois, and offered the first radiation therapy back in the 1940s, and in 2000 they did a "beating heart" surgery where they didn't have to stop the heart. It's a hospital that sticks to policies after "never events"-when serious unexpected patient harm happens-so you'll get an apology, a report, and follow-up with the patient or family to learn what went wrong, but there's no guarantee every doctor uses the teach-back method to check patient understanding, and not all staff may have special training in informed consent. The place asks about the language you want to use for healthcare decisions, gets you a trained interpreter, and gives you clear forms-plus doctors are supposed to explain what to expect and let you ask questions.
There's patient safety policies, a strong billing support process with a representative to check errors and make payment plans, and while they do sue over unpaid bills, you can request a detailed bill within 30 days. There's wheelchair access, air conditioning, restrooms, and parking, and the hospital sees more than 600,000 people a year, with over 200 doctors as part of their group. You get urgent care, telehealth, poison control, TDD lines for hearing help, a medical records department, billing support, and a patient referral line. There are areas for transitional care, intensive care, critical care, and special units for maternity and babies, plus a Baby-Friendly Hospital status with close ties to the OSF Children's Hospital of Illinois and always-on neonatology. Cardiovascular, orthopedic, neuro, cancer, and wound services are strong, and they've got advanced robotic surgery and radiosurgery. The staff work to provide equitable care and focus on health equity in the community with outreach and specialty clinics, and trained fellows and resident doctors keep things up to date. St Joseph's keeps its doors open for many in the region and remains tied to its charity mission and history of innovation.
