Central Pacific Railroad Photographic History Museum
Is there a book out there about the RR Hospital Associations (the first HMO)?
I know the following RRs had them at one time: AT&SF, IC, NP and SP.
There must be others.
Peter Stronge
[from the R&LHS Newsgroup]
posted from CPRR Discussion Group at 7:48 PM
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19 Comments:
See the linked resources containing detailed historical information about the Central Pacific Railroad Hospital.
From: "PM Stronge" strongep@ctaz.com
Reply-To: "PM Stronge" pms1984wm326ca@citlink.net
Museum,
Thank you for the information.
All I have ever seen was odd-ball references in books – nothing specifically devoted.
As I am more familiar with the Santa Fe, the company Doctors and the Hospital Association (and in Arizona/New Mexico, the Indian Health Service) were probably the first Medical personnel in many small towns. They got the young doctors going in an established practice until they had the skills to move on to their own practices.
The Santa Fe had three Hospitals that I know of. Topeka, KS; Temple, TX; and Los Angeles. They had numerous smaller clinics and offices. The building used as a crew change in Needles, CA was the original hospital in that town. Prior to that patients were put up in people's homes, if not shipped off to Los Angeles.
I also had a reply that the C&O, IC & SP (CP) Hospital Assn's were all formed at the same time under CP Huntington's administration - any comments?
Again, thanks for the information.
Peter Stronge
From: "Larry Mullaly" lmullaly@jeffnet.org
Quite by chance I came across the following reference in some materials today:
J. Roy Jones MD, "The Old Central Pacific Hospital" (Western Association of Railway Surgeons, 1960).
My notes read:
Over-the-line surgeons: Dr. Bergman, Reno, and Dr. Meigs, Elko. [In the earliest days] when someone was hurt other employees dumped him on whatever doctor's doorstep that was closest. The original CP hospital was at Thirteenth and D in Sacramento in 1868, [later?] the Protestant Orphan Asylum. In 1870 the first hospital in the world built for workers was erected by the Central Pacific. SP Thomas was the first chief surgeon, but he resigned before February 1870. Succeeded by Alexander Butler Nixon for 16 years, who was followed by Thomas W. Huntington who worked 17 years at the hospital and left in 1899. By 1899 local surgeons along the railroad's lines had increased to 55. Their duties were to render medical and surgical aid to any person inured or sick, whether employed or being transported by the Company. When the amount of practice warranted, surgeons were paid a salary by the Company. Others saw few patients and were granted pass privileges. At the turn of the 1890s the Company conducted no [other] hospital apart from Sacramento though arrangements were made with non-company institutions in San Francisco, Oakland, Los Angeles, Tucson, and Portland for admitting and treating patients at those points.
The copy I saw may have been at the Sherman Library in Newport Beach.
Larry Mullaly
From: "Thornton Waite"
A book was written about the Southern Pacific's hospital association. It was written by Henry J. Short and self-published in 1986. The title is "Railroad Doctors, Hospitals and Associations - Pioneers in Comprehensive Low Cost Medical Care." It is written from a first-hand account, and is 106 pages. ...
[from the R&LHS Newsgroup]
From: Seth Bramson
> There must be others.
There were. Missouri Pacific had several and I believe GN did also. The FEC Hospital was in St. Augustine.
[from the R&LHS Newsgroup]
From: Herbert Harwood
C&O had a voluntary hospital association open to all employees, and maintained hospitals at Clifton Forge, VA, and Huntington, WV. After WWII the Clifton Forge hospital was replaced by what at the time was a showpiece facility that many C&O executives, up to and including the president, used. I believe both buildings remain, although the one in Huntington may no longer be a medical facility.
B&O owned no hospitals but, since the 1880s, operated what it called its Relief Department, which was a forerunner of both Social Security and medical insurance.
Herb Harwood
[from the R&LHS Newsgroup]
From: Dan Cupper
... Roger Grant has an extensive article on the Wabash Hospital Association in the forthcoming Issue 192 of Railroad History. In the same issue, Mark Reutter has a sidebar that documents the continued present-day existence of that one, plus five others, a Chesapeake & Ohio association of Clifton Forge, Va.; CARE (Consolidated Associations of Railroad Employees) of Temple, Texas; a Canadian National/Illinois Central association based in Tinley Park, Ill., a Rio Grande association in Lakewood, Colo.; and a Union Pacific association in Salt Lake City.
Dan Cupper
Harrisburg, Pa.
[from the R&LHS Newsgroup]
See: "RAILROAD DOCTORS, HOSPITALS AND ASSOCIATIONS - Pioneers in Comprehensive Low Cost Medical Care by Henry J Short. Shearer/Graphic Arts, Lakeport, California, 67 pp.
Review by Del Meyer, MD"
From: Arthur Lloyd
WP had a hospital association and their own hospital at Portola , CA
[from the R&LHS Newsgroup]
From: "Schuyler Larrabee"
I have been advised that the DL&W was seriously involved with the Moses Taylor Hospital in Scranton.
I also believe that I have read that the ERIE had an association with a hospital somewhere in the
midsection of the railroad, like Hornell, or Meadville, maybe into Eastern Ohio, but I can't find
the reference, nor can any of the on-line members of the Erie Lackawanna Historical Society confirm
that. If that was so, it was EARLY in the 20th century (the last one).
I also believe that Robert Packer Hospital in Sayre PA was created by the Lehigh Valley, but don't
know that for sure.
[from the R&LHS Newsgroup]
The DL&W in the 19th Century by Taber pages 204, 205 and 206 describes very well how Moses Taylor backed and set up the free hospital for the employees of the DL&W RR and Lackawanna Iron & Steel Co. and families wholly dependent upon them.
Pete Heimbach
[from the R&LHS Newsgroup]
Also see:
Aldrich, Mark "Train Wrecks to Typhoid Fever: The Development of Railroad Medicine Organizations, 1850-World War I" Bulletin of the History of Medicine - Volume 75, Number 2, Summer 2001, pp. 254-289. The Johns Hopkins University Press.
From: "Craig Miller" craigsem@cruzio.com
The new book "Sunset Limited: The Southern Pacific Railroad and the Development of the American West, 1850-1930" by Richard J. Orsi has a chapter on the SP hospital/health care system – apparently the first industrial pre-paid health care system in the US.
Craig Miller
Also see: "Statement of the Workings of the Railroad Hospital at Sacramento, Cal." 1883.
Also see, Southern Pacific Railroad Hospital in 1907.
From: "Bruce Hierstein" brerh@cox.net
Subject: Railroad Hospital Inquiry
I have information that my grandfather was a surgeon for the Santa Fe Railroad at a hospital in Mazatlan and/or Guaymas, Mexico between 1909 and 1911. I have two short newspaper entries, one saying he was working in Guaymas and the other Mazatlan. I also have a letter he wrote, dated August 1909, with the return address being simply, "Guaymas, Sonora, Mexico". The letter makes it clear he was expecting a response, so he had to have been residing in Guaymas at the time.
I have recently learned that the Santa Fe traded its rail lines in Mexico to the Southern Pacific for rail lines between Needles and Mohave, California and those rail lines in Mexico did reach Mazatlan and other points.
Do you have any information re a Southern Pacific Railroad Hospital at either Guaymas or Mazatlan? ...
—Bruce Hierstein
From: "PM Stronge" strongep@citlink.net
You did not include the name of your grandfather.
I only know of a few of the surgeons in the Needles, CA & Kingman, AZ area. If his last name is the same as yours, I do not recognize it.
While the RR did not provide a hospital in Kingman, it did assist in financing and allowing the use of RR land for the first hospital (the RR probably built it, installed the company doctor and had rooms for the ailing – it was only about 4 beds. Prior to this, they were taken care of at home or in a home-care facility). Any employee with severe injuries was stabilized at the hospital and then forwarded to Los Angeles for long-term treatment at the Coast Lines Hospital.
After another larger hospital was built, the building was then used by the company Doctor. Currently it is being used as the crew change point.
As a sidenote, some of the surgeons in the Kingman area were originally with the Indian Health Service in Valentine, later migrated to town after contracting with the RR and established their own practice.
NOTE, no RR hospital in Kingman – the hospital that was the Doctor's office is Needles. PMS ...
—Pete Stronge
From: "Bruce Hierstein" brerh@cox.net
Yes, my grandfather's last name was the same as mine. My grandfather, Dr. William Joseph Hierstein, was born 19 Jul 1882 in Keokuk, Lee Co., IA.
According to my info he only worked for the RR in Mexico sometime between 1909 & 1911.
Can anyone provide any information re a RR hospital in Guaymas or Mazatlan, Mexico?
Many thanks for your help.
—Bruce
Also see,
Railroad hospitals
Railroad physicians and hospitals
Courtesy of Neill Herring, from the Railway & Locomotive Historical Society Internet Message List.
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