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R E B U I L D I N G
The story o Mercy in Joplin
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2012 Mercy. All rights reserved.
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Table o Contents
Preace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Five hospitals, continuous care . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
A closer look | Demolition sets stage or rebirth . . . . . . 17
Why rebuild? Its the Mercy way . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
A closer look | The recovery takes root . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
New hospital leads the way . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .34
A closer look | Mercy mission: Beyond a hospital . . . . 44
About this series . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .47
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16613611186 200+Winds in mph
EF4EF3EF0 EF2EF1 EF5
TORNADO STRENGTH
0
Mi
N
Joplin
S .
R a n g e
L i n
e R d
.
S .
D u q u e n s e
R d
.
S .
M a
i n S
t .
W. 20th t.
.. .. .. ..
h St.E.
. 32ndSt.
P AT H
O F T O R N A D O
Sunday, May 22, 2011, at 5:41 p.m.
A direct hit
A twister strengthens into an EF5 just as it tears into
St. Johns Regional Medical Center. At the hospital, 117 co-workers
rescue 183 patients. Five patients and one visitor die.
The storm kills 161 people and destroys 8,000 structures, including 7,000 homes.
7144
5
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The deadliest U.S. tornado in modern times descended on
Joplin, Mo., in May 2011. Winds churning at 200 mph leveled
nearly every home, school and business in a path six miles
long and nearly a mile wide.
Amid the destruction stood the ruins o St. Johns Regional
Medical Center, a part o Mercy since 2009 and whose nine stories
o shattered windows and crumpled metal became an iconic
image o the broken city. For 90 minutes, Mercy co-workers and
volunteers evacuated 183 patients rom their rooms, carrying them
down dark, debris-strewn stairs to saety.
The people o Joplin have ought to recover and rebuild their
Midwestern homeland. In their progress emerge tales o inspiration
and hope. The Mercy hospital is one, a story that reaches acrossmedicine, aith and community.
Just days ater the storm, Mercy leaders heartened the battered
community with a promise to build a new hospital, now expected
to open in 2015. A week ater the storm, the ministry established
a tent hospital, months later replaced it with temporary structures,
and the ollowing spring built a ull-service hospital in record time
with groundbreaking component technology.Now called Mercy Hospital Joplin, the lie-saving organization
will have occupied ve structures in less than our years. The
ministry will have invested nearly $1 billion in Joplin buildings, and
in its people by continuing to pay 2,200 Mercy employees. Mercy
moved decisively because it is committed to the community and to
the legacy o the Sisters o Mercy, whose care or those in need led
to Joplins rst hospital in 1896.
This is the story o Mercys rebuilding in Joplin.
Preace
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Five hospitals,
continuous care
Even as their sta cared or patients and co-workers in the
tornados atermath, Mercy leaders wondered what to
do with their wrecked hospital and how to provide the
quality care or which St. Johns Regional Medical Center was
known.
Within days, Mercy announced it would build a new
hospital. But that would take years. The ministry needed toprovide or patients, co-workers and the region until then.
What it did would not only dier rom anything Mercy had
ever done. It would dier rom what anybody had ever done.
Let: The tent hospital was a network o arched,
white canvas tunnels with rooms divided by curtains.
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2011 2012 2013
MercyDiscoveryCenter(day care)
Temporarydoctors offices
Main
hospital
Medicaloffices
BradyRehabCenter
O R I G I N A L
C A M P U S
The five
hospitals
1
1
Hospital
complex
Main building
and nearby
clinics and
offices are
destroyed.
Mc
CLELLANDBLVD
.
ST.J
OHN
SBLVD
.
Destroyed
by tornado
Modular buildings
By fall, portable buildings replace
the tents on the same lot.
3Tent hospital2
Within a week,
a military field
hospital is up and
running a block
away.
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N.
S
P ATH O
F T O R N A DOOriginal
hospital
Futurehospital
4
71
Joplin
5
2014 2015
2 3&
Tents andmodularbuildings
Mercy Village(retirement community)
MercyHospitalJoplin
Mercy Hospital Joplin Future Mercy Hospital Joplin
T E M P O R A R Y
C A M P U S
Eleven months after the storm, the
hospital reopens in a structure built
with ground-breaking technology.
A new hospital is scheduled to
open three miles from the
original site.
28THSTREET
4 5
4
Imaging
Lab
Emergency ICU
Cafe
Pharm.
Operatingrooms/cath labs
Patient wings(2 stories)
Entrance
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Original building
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Im fne here
First came a military tent, which was renamed St. Johns Mercy
and which the co-workers later took to calling Mercy M*A*S*H.The oer or an 8,000-square-oot eld hospital came rom nearby
Branson, where a state disaster team had erected the 60-bed tent
in an earthquake drill.
The tent raised concerns or Lynn Britton, Mercys president
and chie executive ocer, who had arrived on the scene the day
ater the tornado. But he realized that Mercy had ew options.
Sure, lets go take a look, he said, and drove the 90 minutes to
Branson with Mike McCurry, Mercys chie operating ocer, and
Dottie Bringle, chie nurse at the Joplin hospital.
As they stood looking at the tent, McCurry turned to Bringle.
So? he asked. You think you can turn this into a hospital?
Bringle didnt hesitate: You betcha.
The return drive allowed time to sketch out a rough design, led
in good part by Dr. Bob Dodson, the hospitals chie o sta. By
1 a.m. on Thursday, only days ater the storm, the tent stood in the
parking lot across the street rom the emptied hospital, erected by
the National Guard and Missouris Disaster Medical
Assistance Team. Ten arched sections comprised the
tent hospital, with a common area linking them.
Mercy had to gure out the electrical service,
plumbing and where new equipment would come
rom to ulll Dodsons plan. Co-workers arrived to
help with setting up, using local contractors when
they could. Mercy structural engineers rom St. Louis
and elsewhere joined the eort.
Besides the much-needed beds, the tent included a small
emergency department, a pharmacy and mobile surgical units.
More sophisticated departments, such as obstetrics and heart
surgery, would have to wait. We were designing on the fy, saysJohn Farnen, a Mercy leader who helped oversee construction.
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Tents
2
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Much o the equipment came rom Mercys other
hospitals. I we had been a standalone hospital, we
would have had nothing, says Shelly Hunter, the
hospitals chie nancial ocer. Communications
remained spotty, with cell phones working
sporadically. Finding a colleague to talk ace-to-ace
was oten the only choice.
On Saturday, the re marshal gave his OK, and the
hospital opened at 7 a.m. that Sunday, with Mercys
electronic health records helping ensure seamless patient care. The
rst patient arrived at 7:03, less than a week ater the tornado struck.
We worked like crazy to get that up, Bringle recalls. We were
exhausted; we were running on adrenalin. Everybody elt a major
sense o accomplishment.
Mercy co-workers prepare or
the opening o the tent hospital.
Aaron DuRall - DuRall Photography
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13
Even as they readied the tents, Mercys planners considered
how they could house doctors oces. They set up modular
clinics in nearby portable buildings. The hospitals lab went intoa Winnebago trailer. As temperatures outside approached 100
degrees, the sta worked uriously to keep it cool enough inside to
protect sophisticated equipment. Mercy, meanwhile, bought a drug
treatment center in Joplin and eventually converted it to a 30-bed
acility or behavioral health patients.
The tent hospital presented a marketing challenge, to say the
least. It was dicult to get people to understand they could even
go and get care there, says Dick Weber, a Joplin businessman who
serves on the local Mercy board.
Some patients didnt need convincing. They had been treated
at St. Johns their whole lives and didnt want to go anywhere else.
One was the mother o Rob OBrian, president o the Joplin Area
Chamber o Commerce. In her 80s, she insisted on going to the tent
hospital ater suering a racture in a all. She would stay a week,
with summer temperatures rising and the roar o air conditioningunits outside her room. At one point, nurses asked i she would be
more comortable elsewhere.
Im ne here, she told them. This is the place I go to and Im
perectly ne here. OBrian says his mothers care didnt suer
under the conditions. The level o care provided even in those
dicult circumstances it was the same.
Moving to The Ritz-Carlton
Mercy knew that as winter came, patients would need
something warmer.
By now, Dr. Glenn Mitchell had stepped orward. A career Army
medical administrator, Mitchell brought invaluable experience in
quickly deploying mobile hospitals, including ater disasters such
as 1998s Hurricane Mitch in Central America. He helped lead
Mercy executives to a Michigan company that made modularbuildings o Styrooam compressed between sheets o metal. While
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Inside the portables
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the company had never built a ull hospital, its
portables slowly replaced the tents throughout the
summer and early all.
Primitive by conventional standards, the
hospital seemed a big leap or Mercys co-workers.
It elt like we were at the Ritz Carlton, says Missy
James, a nurse manager.
In early November, when it was nished,
one co-worker asked Sister Cabrini Koelsch, the hospitals
ministry liaison, to bless the new structure. When the Sister
arrived, the worker showed o a new eature or which she
was especially grateul. Sister, weve got fushies! she said,
reerring to the ull toilets that replaced portable versions that
accompanied the tent.
While still temporary, the hospital
comprised o portables was quieter
and less crowded than the tents.
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Module en route
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An eight-month miracle
As contractors installed the portables, Mercy planners thought
ahead, pushed again by the weather. The portables would suceor winter, but nobody wanted patients in trailers when spring
storms returned. Engineers considered alternatives, and Mercy
solicited bids rom several companies, choosing a Caliornia rm
with a actory that builds component structures.
As Mercy readied the site, the contractor began abricating
224 modules o the same steel, concrete and drywall ound in
conventional construction. Essentially large slices o
a building, modules reached 14-eet wide and high,
and up to 60-eet long. Shipping them cross-country
raised tough challenges, with a ew units traveling
by train and most on trucks cautiously navigating
roads that suddenly elt narrow. Some modules
arrived more than 80 percent complete, as local
workers waited to join them together and stitch in the
necessary plumbing and wiring.Early on, Mercy leaders considered the component hospital
a temporary structure. But as it took shape, interior and exterior
touches smoothed the slices into a hospital that looks no dierent
rom any other. A consensus emerged that the sturdy and good-
looking acility should be called nothing other than Mercy Hospital
Joplin, with its 150,000 square eet o space, a ull-size emergency
department and room or 100 overnight patients. Instead o
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New interior
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something temporary, the structure may have a long-term role at
the site, says Britton, Mercy CEO. Its a building that could serve
Joplin or decades to come.
The largest acute care acility built with modular construction,
the Mercy hospital is twice as large as any the Caliornia
contractor had abricated beore. Mercy brought in its own
roong consultants and other quality control specialists to ensure
it would meet the ministrys standards. Room also had to be
made in the actory or state and local inspectors who wanted to
see the modules assembled. Hundreds o workers
labored tirelessly, many pulling double shits to getthe hospital in place. At one point, 150 electricians
scrambled past each other as they pulled wire
through the state-o-the-art acility.
You go until you get done, says Andy Bowers,
o Neosho, Mo., one o 300 local workers hired or
the project. He recalls that one day ater it rained,
workers tracked red clay down the hallways whileothers ollowed, cleaning up behind them. People are
everywhere, Bowers said during the nal rush to nish.
No one welcomed the component hospital more than the
medical personnel who had practiced in tents and trailers. Its
a wonderul thing, says Dr. Charles Ro,
a surgeon who moved to Joplin two
years ago. He notes that
Mercy Hospital Joplin came
together quickly using
pre-abricated components
transported by tractor trailer.
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Future hospital
5
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the hospital allows or sophisticated procedures, including a
resumption o open-heart surgeries. It also brings back a Mercy
obstetrics unit that reassembles co-workers scattered acrossJoplin and elsewhere, says Kathy Cowley, a nurse who manages
the unit. And we get to start delivering babies again.
Along with its new challenges or his company, the project
has brought an added level o satisaction, says ounder Charlie
Walden o the Caliornia contractor, Walden Structures. Hes
sensed what he called a devotion o Mercy co-workers and their
commitment to Joplin. Theres a eeling youre adding back to the
community.
Mercy opened the new hospital to tours in early April and to
patients by the middle o the month. To get all that done in eight
months is remarkable, Farnen says.
The eort by Mercy co-workers and contractors was nothing
less than a marvel, aided by good weather and what hospital
President Gary Pulsipher calls the Mercy Machine rom across
the region. We wouldnt have been able to do any o this without
the help o the rest o Mercy. Everyone at Mercy stood up in a way
that surprised us.
The uture
Mercys next and greatest challenge is already
underway: Building another hospital big enough
to ully replace St. Johns. Mercy broke ground inJanuary 2012, just as its leaders had promised
in those dark days ater the tornado. It will carry
orward the new name, Mercy Hospital Joplin.
At the groundbreaking, dozens o Mercy
co-workers and their amilies showed up with
shovels. They hugged as they celebrated the beginning o a new
hospital and their accomplishments o the previous months. And
or Farnen, it marked the end o juggling multiple, consuming
projects needed to restore Mercy to Joplin. Building just one
hospital itll eel like a break.
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Demolition setsstage or rebirth
It took minutes or a tornado to knock St. Johns hospital out
o commission. It will take a year to demolish whats let and
remove the rubble.
Mercy co-workers and contractors are taking care to prepare
the roughly 50-acre site in the heart o Joplin or a rebirth that will
leave the community even stronger.
The winds that tore through the campus blew out windows
and tossed equipment blocks away. Some paper records landed
near Springeld, Mo., 75 miles to the northeast. Structurally, the
750,000-square-oot building held up better than could have
been expected. But everything inside was wiped out walls,
windows, stairwells. There would be no keeping out moisture,
and with it, mold. Mercy leaders quickly determined the damage
made it too costly to gut and retrot the building. They would
instead build a new hospital at the citys southern edge.
A CLOSER LOOK
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Meanwhile, Mercy wanted to erase the visible signs o the
tornados devastation rom the landscape and prepare the site or a
brighter uture, says Gary Pulsipher, president o the Joplin hospital.That revival began at the south end o the property, where several
medical buildings stood near the main hospital. Workers began the
demolition there to make room or a new elementary school. Mercy
is donating 12 acres to help Joplin replace classrooms wrecked
by the storm. Other parts o the site might become a theater, a
small woods and memorial gardens to lives lost in the tornado.
Community members, starting with a open meeting that evolved
into an advisory board, are working with Mercy leaders to ensurethe results will respect and honor the sites role in Joplins history o
growth and resilience.
The campus literally stands atop a part o that history a
matrix o underground lead mines. The Joplin area was known as
the lead mining capital o the world beginning in the 1830s. In more
recent times, the mines were lled in to make way or commercial
growth, which included construction o the medical center in 1968.Under normal circumstances, demolition experts would implode
the main hospital. Because o the mines, experts eared explosive
charges might generate uplit pressure that could damage
neighboring properties. So contractors turned to a traditional
wrecking ball and specialized grappling equipment to nish o the
building. Mercy held a ceremony o remembrance and appreciation
in January 2012, with a bagpiper playing Amazing Grace as a crane
took its rst swings with the ball.
That it took seven months to get to that point would come as
no surprise. In its own way, untangling a destroyed hospital is as
delicate as the microsurgery once conducted there.
When Mercy co-workers returned to the scene ater the
tornado, they donned respirators, hazardous materials suits and
boots. For nearly two months, workers sited through materials
ound in the ruins, including oce urniture, medical equipment,
medications, computers and nancial records. At one point, small
rerigerators that had held medicines lined up shoulder-to-shoulder
in the parking lot awaiting disposal. Fortunately, patient les stayed
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Cross-town journey: A Missouri State Highway Patrol truck carries a
wooden cross rom the debris-strewn emergency department (let) to the
groundbreaking (top right).
sae in powerul computers in Washington, Mo., the heart o Mercys
electronic health records.
Workers inventoried the material, much o which rests in a
warehouse in Springeld. Amid the fotsam are Bibles, artwork and
other decorations. Workers also ound three time capsules one
rom when the hospital was built, another when the east tower opened
in the 1980s and one marking St. Johns 100th anniversary in 1996.
During the demolition ceremony, workers loaded a 4-oot-tall
cross rom the emergency department onto a truck and carried it
to another ceremony marking the start o work on a new hospital.Mercy will nd a permanent and prominent spot or the icon, says
Terry Wachter, hospital vice president or mission.
The cross certainly has scars on it, she says. They just add character.
Courtesy: Eric Rudd
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Why rebuild?Its the Mercy way
Minutes ater learning a tornado had pummeled Mercys
hospital in Joplin, Mike McCurry heard comorting
words rom his boss and the head o the company,
CEO Lynn Britton:
Mike, dont worry, were going to rebuild.
It was a gut response, and or a steward o Mercys mission,
a happy moment or the company and its ministry. Its very
arming, Sister Mary Roch Rocklage, ormer CEO, says o how
Mercys current leadership responded. Somehow, they have the
same calling an attraction to serving in a certain way.
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The impulse to stick with Joplin in its hour o need was a no-
brainer, she says, or anyone steeped in the values and traditions
o Mercy. Still, Sr. Rochs smile grows wider as she talks abouthow the decision was made not by the Sisters o Mercy
who ran the health ministry or more than 135 years, but by the
co-workers who assumed responsibility more than a decade ago.
Its also no accident. When the Sisters o Mercy gave up
the day-to-day management o their hospitals and clinics, they
worked to preserve the values that drove them in their health
care mission. They maintain infuence at the highest levels,
including on Mercys board o directors, though members o the
religious order are a minority. Its the board that chooses Mercys
top executives. Were very selective about who we hire,
Sr. Roch says.
The Sister continues in an ocial capacity as health ministry
liaison or Mercy, which now has more than 30 hospitals,
revenue o more than $4 billion and 38,000 employees in more
than 100 communities. As with other Sisters, her job essentiallyis to preserve within the organization the values and the tradition
o the Sisters o Mercy. And a long tradition it is.
The religious community that gave rise to St. Louis-based
Mercy began with six nuns who arrived in 1856 rom New York
by train and boat. Their Catholic order originated in Ireland,
ounded in 1831 by Catherine McAuley, an orphan adopted into
a wealthy Quaker home. She inherited a ortune. Near a wealthypart o Dublin, she opened the rst House o Mercy that was
dedicated to providing education and social services to the poor,
with a particular emphasis on women
and children.
Church leaders agreed to a non-cloistered institute that
allowed McAuley and her co-workers to become an unusual
religious order, one that provided aid outside a convent. The odd
sight o religious Sisters bustling about Dublins streets earned
them the nickname, the walking nuns. The orders bias or
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Now health
ministry liaison,
Sr. Roch was
Mercys frstCEO in 1986.
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action helped attract hundreds o women to join and remained
a central tenet through the decades.
The six nuns came to St. Louis to start a Catholic school. Theysoon saw a need or health care and by 1871 had opened their rst
hospital in St. Louis, which later became St. Johns Hospital, named
or St. John o God, who had served the sick and poor in Portugal.
Now known as Mercy Hospital St. Louis, the center is Mercys
largest institution with nearly 1,000 beds. Another Mercy hospital
in Springeld, Mo., has about 850 beds, and the Mercy hospital in
Oklahoma City, Okla., nearly 400 beds.
Most o Mercys hospitals landed in much smaller towns as
the Sisters sought those with the greatest needs. Even Springeld
was just a dusty country town when the Sisters o Mercy arrived in
1891 to start what became another St. Johns hospital. Most o the
In the beginning:
The late-1800s groundbreaking
or Joplins frst Mercy hospital.
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towns that drew the Sisters have remained relatively small. Mercy
primarily operates across our states Missouri, Oklahoma,
Kansas and Arkansas with nearly 30 smaller hospitals in towns
like Lebanon, Mo., and its 60 beds; Independence, Kan., also with
about 60 beds; Berryville, Ark., with 25 beds; and Healdton, Okla.,with about 22 beds.
Joplin sits near the geographic center o Mercys territory,
serving as a commercial and health care hub at the border o
Mercys our states. Joplin has only 50,000 residents, but the city
swells every day to several times that size with those working,
shopping, or seeking medical care.
Like many o the Mercy hospitals, Joplin has a Sister o Mercywho ocuses on the ministrys commitment to serving the poor.
We want to pass on the heritage o Mercy that we dont turn
Tough stu, even today:
Pictures o early Sisters o Mercy
survived the tornado.
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M I S S O U R
K A N S A S
A R K A N S A
O K L A H O M A
44
4
Joplin
uisS . L
klahomaCity
= Mercy locations
The I-44 corridor
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REBUILDING
In the process, the Sisters sought to preserve the unique
personality o their order in the work o Mercy. They identied the
values that guided their work dignity, justice, service, excellence
and stewardship. They also gave voice to the orders charism, a
Greek word meaning the graces given to individuals or the good
o others bias or action, entrepreneurial, hospitality, right
relationships and ullness or lie.
Its bias or action, in particular, seems to distinguish the order.
As one priest liked to tell Sr. Roch, he could spot Sisters o Mercybecause as they shook his hand, theyd be xing his hangnail.
A year and a hal ater Mercy came to Joplin, the tornado hit.
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Despite his impulse to rebuild in Joplin, CEO Britton concedes
he wasnt sure how Mercy would aord it. Nobody understood the
ull extent o the damage in those early hours, much less what kindo insurance was available to restore buildings and services. I had
lots o people throwing all kinds o numbers at me about what that
decision was going to cost, Britton says.
McCurry, or one, says he assumed the Joplin hospital had
minimal insurance, which tended to be the Mercy way a
ministry that typically tries to cover its own losses. He also
assumed the hospital had no business continuation insurance
that would help pay salaries o employees while Mercy rebuilt.
But the executives plowed ahead, rming up within the rst
48 hours their commitment to rebuild and to keep all 2,200
Joplin employees on the payroll. We knew we were going to do
it, so why wait to reveal it? Britton says, adding that he hoped
Mercys early announcement might help spur others to step
orward with pledges to help Joplin rebuild.
Deciding to stay in Joplin meant Mercy also had to preserve its
sta, so keeping them on the payroll made business sense. It also
elt true to Mercys mission. There wasnt much brilliance to what
we were doing, McCurry says. It just elt right.
Looking back, he says, it now eels like the most brilliant thing
theyve ever done. It helps that, later that week, Mercy learned it
in act had pretty good insurance on the Joplin hospital, including
some coverage or worker wages. Altogether, Mercy might recoverabout $700 million in insurance payments. That still leaves a hole
o $200 million to $300 million, which McCurry says hurts but
isnt crippling.
Joplin will leap rom a building that was outdated as a medical
center to one that is custom-designed or modern health care, says
Gary Pulsipher, the hospitals president. And the city will have a
striking landmark that should help ease the memory o a ruinedSt. Johns. The new Mercy Hospital Joplin will occupy a beautiul
building on a hill overlooking the regions busiest highway. I love
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REBUILDING
the act its on the interstate, Pulsipher says. People wont have
to wonder how they get to the hospital.
He and others agree that another company might have takenthe insurance money and invested it in a major metropolitan
area, leaving behind the less-lucrative market o Joplin. Mercy
wont get back that $700 million in prots rom Joplin, at least
not in the lietimes o its current executives. Then again, says
McCurry, we werent thinking like businessmen.
Pulsipher speaks outside
the ruined hospital less than
three days ater the tornado.
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REBUILDING
No one at Mercy had experienced a disaster like the one that
struck St. Johns hospital in Joplin. But everyone thought o theexperiences o others in recovering rom tragedy. Mercy CEO Lynn
Britton remembered Oklahoma City and how citizens created a
memorial that was positive and looked ahead. Others remembered
Hurricane Katrina or other tornados where residents pulled together
to rebuild and restore their communities.
A dierent kind o story came to mind or Terry Bader, who helps
oversee Mercy design and construction. It was 70 miles south o
Joplin where something positive was underway the construction
o a new hospital in Rogers, Ark., that opened in 2008. Mercy was
clearing the site near an interstate highway to replace Mercys aging
hospital in town. In the way stood a stately persimmon tree.
We knew we had to take it down, Bader says. But instead o
turning the tree into mulch, we had a local guy make pen and pencil
sets out o the persimmon wood. We gave those sets to all the leaders
in the community so they could have a part o the sites history.
Now Mercy has cleared more than 100 acres on the south side
o Joplin or a new hospital. A small woods covered part o the site,
including oak, sassaras, dogwood, redbud and hickory trees. Taking
them down was painul ater the tornado took out thousands o trees
across Joplin just months earlier.
Planners kicked around what they could do to ease the pain,
looking or something that would also t our lean-and-greenapproach to things, Bader says. Along came Joplin resident
The recoverytakes root
A CLOSER LOOK
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Workers identifed saplings that were
most likely to survive transplanting.
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REBUILDING
Marcia Long, who suggested at a Mercy community roundtable
that saplings rom the site be saved and replanted when
construction is done in 2015.Jumping on the idea, Mercy and its landscape architects at
SWT Design quickly hired a nursery to save about 470 saplings
rom the construction site and move them to a nearby tree arm.
The arm will nurture the trees or the next three years. When we
get them back, they will be nice and healthy, Bader says. Theyll
join another 1,000 trees along with grasses and wildfowers that
will make the property more abundant than beore construction.
Much o the lumber rom the elled trees will help rebuild
Joplin, going to other construction projects around the recovering
city. Cratsmen will carve some into Mercy crosses.
Saving the saplings is just one way that Mercy is trying to
preserve and restore what its co-workers and the wider Joplin
community hold sacred.
Some artiacts will remain as part o a memorial garden at thesite o the old St. Johns. A ew will become part o the new Mercy
Hospital Joplin now under construction. Designers dont intend
Missouri conservation ofcials applaudedMercy, saying they knew o no other
company that has worked as hard to
reuse trees on a construction site.
Photos courtesy: SWT Design
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REBUILDING
to install them as obvious memorials in the new building, but
incorporate them as subtle and tasteul reminders o the spiritual
continuum that bridges the two Mercy hospitals. The stations othe cross, or example, survived in the ormer hospitals chapel and
can become part o the new.
Also intact and somewhat miraculously were the stained
glass windows rom the chapel. They, too, will help bring a amiliar
and comorting touch to the new chapel.
The new hospital is near the Wildcat Glades and Audubon
Conservation Center. Mercy worked with the Audubon Society andgovernment agencies to ensure that construction would not harm
the centers ecosystem. Now Mercy is working to make its campus
blend comortably with the glades.
Mercy planners envision a day when Joplin students will
conduct science experiments at Wildcat Glades and the Mercy
campus. Perhaps, they will take measure o the saplings that
survived the deadliest tornado in U.S. history and returned to
provide shade and comort to a community on the mend.
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REBUILDING
F
ootsteps haunt hospital designers. Not the sound o
ootsteps, but their tracks. We dont like those ootprint
stickers they put on the foor or people to ollow, saysMercys Cindy Beckham, who helps oversee acility design.
Old hospitals, like the tornado-wrecked St. Johns
in Joplin, needed the stickers to guide patients
through a maze o hallways, oces and
check-in points. Routes get twisted over
the decades as aging, infexible
New hospitalleads the way
The new hospital
entrances include
shelters or patients
and employees
waiting or rides.
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REBUILDING
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REBUILDING
buildings struggle with new services, specialties and other health
care changes. So its with pride that Beckham and others show o
the simple and fexible foor plans or Mercys newest hospital, parto a $500 million health care campus under construction on the
south side o Joplin.
The new campus replaces the old St. Johns ater it was let in
ruins by the 2011 tornado. Not wanting to wait or demolition to
nish at the old campus, Mercy leaders broke ground or the new
Mercy Hospital Joplin in January 2012. Crews cleared more than
100 acres o land to open a blank canvas or painting the next
generation o Mercy care.
When it opens in 2015, the eight-story hospital will be the
centerpiece o a $1 billion string o investments Mercy is making
in the Joplin area. The outlays include other temporary and
permanent medical acilities, the cost to keep paying Mercy
employees in the interim, and money to lease and expand Mercy
McCune-Brooks Hospital in Carthage, just north o Joplin. The
addition o Mercy McCune-Brooks and the new hospital tothe south promise a dispersed Mercy system that will include
physician oces across the area. Its not just a new hospital,
says Mercy CEO Lynn Britton. Its an entirely new, modern health
care inrastructure that will enable the Joplin area to meet the
challenges o the next 50 years.
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Joplin
Original hospital
S .
R a
n g e
L i n
e R d
.
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.
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M a
i n S
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.
. S
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W. 20th St.
.. .. .. ..
.32nd St.
P AT H
O F T O
R N A D O
1
FutureMercy
HospitalJoplin
44 71
Original hospital
.20th St.
A TO F
T O RN A
The future hospital
38
REBUILDING
Starting a hospital rom scratch enabled Mercy and its
architects to ponder what would make a model acility. They
enlisted patients, co-workers and community members as anadvisory group or brainstorming sessions on what they wanted
rom a new building. Many Mercy employees had not worked in a
hospital other than St. Johns. Still reeling rom the disaster, some
tended at rst to want to replace what theyd lost. They asked, or
example, or registration areas with the sliding-glass windows that
patients associate with doctors.
The new hospital isrising in a relatively
undeveloped
section o Joplin.
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Conversations, however, soon turned to reducing those types o
traditional walls between patients and caregivers. And instead o
multiple registration desks or dierent departments, as in the oldSt. Johns, conversation turned to the breakthrough idea o a single
place where patients could register or any and all departments.
Gaining momentum, the innovation reached across other areas
including medical records and nancial counseling. They, too, could
rely on mobile technology to bring paperwork to patients rather
than asking them to nd their way to other doors.
Essentially, the hospital and clinic wont have conventional
registration desks. An employee greets patients as they arrive, and
any questions or papers are brought to them. With the modern
technology we have, were able to get rid o a lot o the old barriers
to care, Britton says. The old things that made you eel less
dignied in health care, were rethinking all o that.
Patients have responded warmly
to prototypes or Mercys new
interior design, saying they
dont eel like medical ofces.
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REBUILDING
Even the hallway lobby where patients arrive will look
remarkably dierent rom a traditional hospital. Designers talk
o the area as more o a gallery instead o a waiting room, awarm place with soas and tables. No more hard-foor shbowl
with straight-back chairs along the wall. Even the art might be
interactive to help distract patients and amilies rom the concern
behind their visit.
The convenience doesnt stop in the hallway. Increasingly
mobile medical technology means a patient can go to a room or
an exam and stay there or a wide range o tests. A technician
could come to draw blood, or bring a portable ultrasound machine
or heart monitor. A specialist doctor could also come to the room
or consultations. The idea is that the people who work there know
their way around the hospital; the patient wont need to.
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REBUILDING
These innovations arent unique to Joplin. Were doing dierent
pieces o this across Mercy communities, Britton says. Joplin is
the rst place where it is all coming together.The new hospital will open with about 600,000 square eet
o space and more than 200 patient beds. Combined with other
acilities and an expansion o the ormer McCune-Brooks, Mercy
plans to have more than 400 beds in the Joplin area. Other acilities
on the new campus will include a behavioral health clinic and
perhaps a rehabilitation center, bringing Mercys new space in Joplin
to nearly 1 million square eet, similar to what it lost to the tornado.
Plans or the new hospital itsel include medical and surgical
care, critical care, intensive care, cancer care as well as greatly
expanded care or women and children, with labor, delivery,
recovery and postpartum rooms and neonatal and pediatric
intensive care.
In addition to clinical space and beds, the building will house
some doctors oces, which typically are ound in other buildings
near a hospital. Specialty physicians and a ew primary doctors
will have their oces in the hospital. Theyll have a short walk to
see patients or an exam or visit them in their rooms, have lab
tests and imaging conducted, or even undertake major surgeries.
Cardiologists will have oces on the same foor where heart
patients rest, obstetricians and pediatricians on the same foor as
mothers giving birth.
Crews will nish the hospital in less than 40 months, andgroundbreaking came ater only a ew months o planning. The
speed is enabled partially because o a design that, while unique
to the site, is ull o standard modules drawn rom a guide that
governs new construction across the Mercy system. That means
we could start building beore it was ully designed, says John
Farnen, a Mercy leader who is supervising construction in Joplin.
A clinic module, or example, can be a reestanding acility, orseveral can come together in a larger clinic. Designers used a passel
o modules or specialty clinics, emergency departments, doctors
oces and others in planning the Joplin hospital.
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REBUILDING
Designers didnt even have to know which clinic modules might
be used or what specialties as construction got underway. The
standards allow fexibility as demands and specialties shit,
whole sections can be converted. Even individual rooms can shit
with the seasons, such as those adjacent to pediatric intensive
care. Rooms across a hall can be added to the pediatric ICUwhen winter comes and more kids get sick, and later shited into
something else. Its really about the need at the time, explains
Beckham, who joined Mercy several years earlier to help ashion
the ministry-wide designs.
The hospital, in act, adds a neonatal intensive care unit that
wasnt in St. Johns. Too oten, amilies had to travel to another city
when their newborns were sick. The neonatal care complementsan expanded labor and delivery department in the new hospital
as Mercy aims to better serve Joplins youngest inants and
their parents.
Groundbreaking ater months o planning: Bishop James Vann
Johnston o the Springfeld-Cape Girardeau Diocese, right, and
Father Saari Burusu bless the new site on Jan. 29, 2012.
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Parking spaces
radiate outward
Hospital
entrance
Clinic
entrance
Other buildings on the hospitalcampus will include a
rehabilitation center and
perhaps a behavioral health
clinic, among others.
Hospital
building
The new campus
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REBUILDING
Ministry-wide design guidelines include the buildings exterior,
which shares a look with other Mercy clinics, hospitals and
oces. The amiliar appearance is part o a major eort across theorganization to merge Mercys hundreds o sites into a amiliar
brand. Its partly about marketing, but more about patient service.
The same electronic records are available across Mercy and make it
easier to treat a patient at any o its acilities; standardizing buildings
and processes will help patients understand thats possible. Their
experience also will eel amiliar wherever they go within Mercy.
The modern design includes subtle reerences to Mercys
traditions. Entrances, or example, include a prominent glass wall
whose interior lighting serves as a sort o lamp guiding those in
need. The windows mullions orm a cross that is similar to one
Catherine McAuley, the ounder o the Sisters o Mercy, had prayed
to in the window o a Quaker household, where she was not allowed
to display Catholic icons such as crucixes. Employees who know
the story can see the cross, as well as patients who take comort in
the religious symbolism.Convenience or patients at the new hospital reaches into the
surrounding parking lots. Most hospitals have one main entrance,
but the new Mercy Hospital Joplin will have two, one or the
hospital and one or the clinic. The two entrances help divide trac
and bring patients into the building on dierent foors. They also
put parking on both sides o the hospital, meaning smaller lots and
shorter walks. And unlike the grid-like lots at a shopping mall, the
hospitals will stretch across an arc. That will allow the lines at each
parking spot to widen outward, opening more room or those exiting
with canes or wheelchairs.
Whichever door they choose, patients will enter into wide
hallways with an obvious path to elevators or the receiving gallery,
where theyll be greeted and checked in. Designers planned other
foors with similar simplicity in bringing patients to any oce or
service. No more foor stickers to nd their way, Beckham sayswith a laugh:
No ootprints, no way.
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We have a nose or need, says Sister Mary Roch Rocklage,
Mercys health ministry liaison.When it comes to health care, that need oten is ound in rural
areas. Only a sprinkling o Mercys more than 30 hospitals are
in major metropolitan areas. The rest are in small-to-mid-size
communities like Joplin. Its who we are, says Mercy COO Mike
McCurry. The community means a lot more to us than the market.
In Joplin, the Sisters o Mercy began providing health care to
those most in need soon ater they arrived, originally to teach. Theysaw a glaring need or a health ministry in the rontier mining town,
and opened the towns rst hospital in 1896.
Today, Mercy helps ulll that mission by extending some o the
most sophisticated medicine in America to rural settings across
its seven-state ministry. It thrills us to be able to do that, says
McCurry. Small communities, or example, oten wrestle with a
shortage o specialists. Mercys system, combined with the latest
technology, has helped developed cutting-edge solutions.
Take neurology, the treatment o disorders in the brain and
nervous system such as those caused by strokes. Rural markets
oten cant support expensive specialists such as neurologists.
Mercy has responded with its telestroke program, which
electronically links patients around the clock to ar-fung
neurologists. Powerul cameras in a rural hospital enable a distant
doctor to diagnose strokes and prescribe medicine that limits thedamage i caught early. Mercy is deploying the technology across
its hospitals.
Mercy mission:Beyond a hospital
A CLOSER LOOK
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M I S S O U R I
K A N S A S
A R K A N S A S
T E X A S
L O U I S I A N A
I S .
O K L A H O M A
t. Louis
Oklahoma
ity
Laredo
New
Orleans
Jackson
Fort
Smith
= Mercy locations
Joplin
44
4
35
5
30
40
40
20
10
Gulf of Mexico
Mercys seven-state ministry
46
REBUILDING
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A similar system called SaeWatch enables doctors to
electronically monitor intensive care units at a distance, and
provides patient access to highly specialized physicians. Mercy hasthe nations largest electronic ICU network.
Mercy oers other advantages to communities like Joplin. The
systems purchasing power and management expertise oer the
benets o size to small hospitals. Also, a more serious gap opens
in a smaller community than in a big city i a specialist leaves.
You have to ll the void in a hurry, says Ron Ashworth, chair o
Mercys health ministry. We oer a large recruiting reach.
McCurry notes that he and Mercy CEO Lynn Britton grew up
in small towns. They take special satisaction in Mercys ocus on
communities like their hometowns. And while he doesnt answer
to the conventional shareholders o a public corporation, McCurry
likes to say that Mercy has three million shareholders its
customers in towns like Joplin: They are people with real needs
who we exist to serve. Or, as Sr. Roch puts it, Were at home in
any community.
Nothing challenged Mercys mission more than the 2011
tornado, which threatened not only the uture o its Joplin hospital
but the uture o Joplin itsel. Mercys decision to stay and rebuild
means the area not only keeps the high-quality care or which
Mercy is known, but it also encourages other residents and
businesses to do the same.
We want to be a permeating presence, Sr. Roch says.How do we become a part o those communities and help
change them?
In Joplin, Mercy is living the answer to that question.
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REBUILDING
About this seriesAs the nation remembers the storm that ravaged Joplin in
May 2011, Mercy has published a series o books on the events
that changed the lives o so many in the community, and how
the health ministry has responded.The books include this one, Rebuilding, which explains
how Mercy has replaced the hospital destroyed in the tornado.
In Caring, Mercy arms its commitment to its workers and
the community o Joplin. In Enduring, Mercy captures stories
o courage in the atermath o the tornado and looks ahead to
Joplin's uture.
The works weave a story o past, present and uture andMercys promise to value all three.
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