Page 25 - Delaware Medical Journal - October 2016
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HISTORY
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centers, four walk-in care sites, a home health agency, and several complementary services throughout southern Delaware, including an adult activity center. The Margaret H. Rollins Nursing School a hospital, in 2015 opened a state-of-the-art building.
“Not many health systems in the country have faced the same pressure to expand,” said Jeffrey M. Fried, FACHE, president and CEO of Beebe since 1995. “Beebe’s growth over the past 100 years has been exceptional. In large part, that is because the population growth in Sussex County has been so substantial.”
Beebe is currently planning a $200 million expansion at its campus in Lewes to begin in 2019 that would include new private patient rooms.
As the county’s population soared, so did the demand for services such as radiation oncology and cardiac care close to home. As a result, Beebe has not only followed the trends in health care but in many respects, it is leading them.
BUILDING A FOUNDATION
As business partners, the hospital’s founders, Doctors Beebe, were a good match. They both graduated from Jefferson Medical College (now Sidney Kimmel Medical College at Thomas Jefferson University) in Philadelphia. Dr. Richard Clarence Beebe, who was nine years younger than his brother, was known for his calm bedside manner.
The more formidable Dr. James Beebe Sr., who studied business at Goldey College in Wilmington before attending medical school, was a natural leader. He became the President of the Medical Society of Delaware in 1916. He was also an adept networker. He enlisted the support of Benjamin F. Shaw, a Wilmington businessman and philanthropist, to contribute $100,000 toward a new hospital, which was built in 1921. The men likely met in Rehoboth Beach, where the Beebes had a summer clinic and Shaw had a vacation home. In 1927, Shaw funded an annex that brought the bed count to 60.
Both brothers maintained close relationships with Jefferson College physicians, many of whom traveled to Lewes to see patients. Dr. P. (Pascal) Brooke Bland, a gynecologist and an assistant professor of gynecology at Jefferson, was a speaker at the dedication of the Shaw building in 1921. Wilmington
Dr. James Beebe Sr. and Dr. Richard C. Beebe, circa 1936
specialists also made the journey on a routine basis.
Many prominent local doctors contributed to Beebe’s early success. Dr. Ulysses Washington Hocker was a President of the Medical Society of Delaware and the mayor of Lewes in 1931. Dr. William R. Messick was also a pharmacist, cannery inspector, and the mayor of Rehoboth Beach in 1914 and 1915. In 1929, Dr. Ervin L. Stambaugh was hired as the third full-time physician at Beebe Hospital. A graduate of Pennsylvania State University in 1924 and Jefferson Medical College in 1928, he worked at Beebe until he retired in 1981.
In 1950, Dr. James Beebe Jr. joined Beebe as Sussex County’s
College, he could have stayed in Philadelphia to practice. But his father, he once said, needed him.
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