Hospitals’ history under revision

Empire Health Services officials fretting about their future were forced to recast their past after admitting they wrongly claimed fame for establishing Spokane’s oldest hospital.

A company Web site that said Deaconess Medical Center “was the first hospital in Spokane” was corrected quickly Monday and apologies were proffered to Sacred Heart Medical Center, whose presence predated Deaconess by a decade.

“It is an error,” said Christine Varela, a spokeswoman for Empire. “There was no intentional slight or anything like that.”

The Web site now says Deaconess was “one of” the first hospitals in Spokane. Varela said she didn’t know how long the error had been on the site.

The issue was raised after Empire officials announced Friday they’ve hired a Wall Street hospital broker, Cain Brothers, to seek investors or buyers for Deaconess and Valley Hospital and Medical Center.

The Empire Health Web site that listed the organization’s 2,400 employees and 225,000 patients also indicated that Deaconess, founded in 1896, was the area’s first hospital.

In fact, Sacred Heart’s Web site claims, that distinction belongs to the hospital established in 1886 by Mother Joseph of the Sisters of Providence. At the request of Father Joseph Cataldo, Mother Joseph supervised construction of a wood-framed “refuge for the homeless, poor and dying” on the site where the Spokane Convention Center now stands.

“We know who’s the oldest; they just don’t,” said Maureen Goins, spokeswoman for Sacred Heart.

Sister Pam White, a volunteer archivist for the Sisters of Providence and Sacred Heart, said she believed that the first hospital actually was built on the site of today’s DoubleTree Hotel, but she was double-checking.

“I’m trying to get the details of the history,” Sister White said.

The sister said she could understand how errors could happen. “I was even checking myself,” she said.

No one from either institution believed that the historical distinction had much bearing on current services.

But at least one source indicates that there was a hospital in Spokane even before Mother Joseph arrived.

According to a 1981 article by Dr. Ollie J. Rounds in the Spokane County Medical Society Bulletin, a New York transplant, Dr. James M. Masterson, erected a tent hospital at Howard and Second as early as 1879.

By 1882, Masterson, who apparently became Spokane’s first coroner, built a permanent hospital at the intersection of Wall and First.

Or so the story goes.

“That’s the first I’ve ever heard about that,” Goins said. “We’ll have to check with Sister Pam.”