St. Elizabeth’s parent company adds Greenville Regional Hospital

The order of nuns that runs St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Belleville — Hospital Sisters Health System — acquired Greenville Regional Hospital, which will now be known as HSHS Holy Family Hospital.

“By joining Hospital Sisters Health System, we are creating the foundation upon which we will continue our mission of providing high quality health care close to home, well into the future,” said Brian Nall, chief operating officer of Holy Family Hospital. “We are all truly excited about what this means for our organization and more importantly, what this means for the patients and families we will continue to serve for years to come.”

Greenville Regional Hospital and HSHS began exploring affiliation last year and received approval from the Illinois Health Facilities and Services Review Board in March. The affiliation became effective May 2.

“We have really reached the starting line. It’s the finish line of actually becoming part of HSHS, but it’s also the starting line of the new beginnings; there’s plenty of work ahead,” Nall said.

Now that the affiliation is finalized, Greenville Regional Hospital was renamed HSHS Holy Family Hospital to reflect its new Catholic identity. The name was chosen after receiving input from community members, according to James Dover, president and CEO of the HSHS Southern Illinois Division.

“We are honored that a community such as Greenville has asked us to take ownership and responsibility for their very trusted community asset in terms of that main hospital,” Dover said. “We are humbled and honored to do so. It continues to further our vision that we want for our geographic region to be able to help those who seek to increase access to care; we want to build on their historical quality of care and as we build our network of care across multiple counties to deliver care more efficiently.”

To make the affiliation as smooth as possible, Dover said more than 140 people served on 24 different committees. “All of them were charged with making sure that when we got ready to go that we had not overlooked anything,” he said. “You don’t get a chance to do a do-over on these things so we wanted to do it right the first time.”

Greenville Hospital is now the 15th affiliated hospital of Springfield-based HSHS. Other HSHS hospitals in the metro-east are St. Elizabeth’s in Belleville, St. Joseph’s in Highland and St. Joseph’s in Breese.

Greenville Hospital was previously an independent, non-profit hospital, providing residents of Bond and surrounding counties with inpatient, outpatient and emergency care services. Its medical staff includes employed physicians and more than 50 specialty physicians who see patients for consultation and treatment at the hospital each month. It has about 350 total employees.

“They (employees) have been very warm and receptive to the change,” Nall said.

Dover agreed. “The staff and the volunteers are really embracing the change,” he said.

A private blessing and dedication ceremony was Wednesday at Holy Family Hospital.

“We are honored that the residents of Greenville have invited us to provide health care services in their community. The Hospital Sisters of St. Francis have a long history of answering the call to serve. Bringing our health care ministry to Greenville and having the local hospital join our family continues that tradition,” Mary Starmann-Harrison, president and CEO of HSHS, said in a released statement.

HSHS is constructing a new replacement hospital for St. Elizabeth’s. The 303-bed hospital in downtown Belleville will close once construction is complete on the 144-bed hospital off Interstate 64 on North Green Mount Road. The cost of the project is $253 million.

For more information about HSHS Holy Family Hospital, visit the hospital’s new web site at www.HSHSHolyFamily.org.

This story was originally published May 4, 2016 at 5:00 PM with the headline "St. Elizabeth’s parent company adds Greenville Regional Hospital."