Mercy Health celebrates 150 years of service to Baltimore

When Mercy Health Services underwent a strategic plan in the early 1990s, it developed its first center of excellence, with an emphasis on women’s health.

That rings true with the original work of the Sisters of Mercy, who sponsor the hospital, according to Sister of Mercy Helen Amos, president and CEO of Mercy from 1991 to 1999 and now executive chairwoman of the health system’s board of directors.

“The care of women and children was the founding purpose of the Sisters of Mercy, so it seemed like a good fit,” she said as the hospital marks its 150th anniversary.

It made sense that women’s health became Mercy’s first center of excellence.

“I’m very proud of that, but I’m especially proud that once we understood how to create and resource centers of excellence, we were able to add the ones that our community needed,” including cancer care, orthopedics, digestive health and liver disease.

“Every single one of those things responds to a need in the community and that’s all it takes to attract the interest of the Sisters of Mercy. Is it a need of the community? Then we will try to do what we can,” she said.

The Sisters of Mercy started in Dublin, Ireland, with a special interest in the sick and the poor. Some sisters came to Baltimore in 1855 and took care of the tuition­free school at St. Peter’s Parish on Poppleton Street. They established a motherhouse in Mount Washington.

Even with the community’s meager resources, sisters were sent out to care for sick and wounded soldiers in the years leading up to the Civil War. Their dedication to health care was known to local doctors who came to the sisters in November 1874 to ask them to take charge of a small health dispensary.

Those “founding stories” are not lost on those who work at Mercy Health Services in various locations with more than 4,800 employees and 500 physicians.

“We pay a lot of attention to inspiring our entire workforce to be practitioners of what we refer to as our core values, and I think they’re very responsive to that,” Sister Helen said. “The mission statement that people know pretty well by heart begins with the words, ‘Like the Sisters of Mercy before us …’ and I feel very fortunate that it still seems to have inspirational power with our staff.”

Those core values – dignity, justice, hospitality, stewardship, excellence and prayer – echo through Mercy’s halls.

“For as long as I’ve been here, we always had morning and evening prayer over the loudspeakers,” Sister Helen said. “But during the pandemic, we started offering a prayer at noon and, of course, a lot of people are really, really busy and can’t stop, but people have responded to that. And even after the height of the pandemic was over, (people said) please don’t stop the noon prayer. We like the noon prayer.”

Dr. David Maine, current president and CEO of Mercy Health and the first physician in the role, said everything starts with the legacy of the Sisters of Mercy.

“So today at Mercy, we’re bigger,” he said. “Our footprint is bigger, our geographic assets are wider and certainly much more distributed, but we continue to be focused on quality, compassion, empathy, comprehensive care delivery and consider it a privilege” to serve patients.

Maine still sees patients and does procedures regularly at the hospital. That engagement also allows him to see how the patients experience the health system, such as how referrals to subsequent care are handled. Being a physician helps him remember why Mercy, whose lighted signage beams above the skyline, continues to be a beacon for Baltimore.

He said Mercy has had opportunities to move out of Baltimore, but in 2007, when the institution took on debt for the new hospital, the board “doubled down” on its commitment to Baltimore City.

Keeping people healthy is better than waiting to treat them when they get sick, Maine said.

“We want to create healthier communities,” he said. “And so, part of our strategy through our broadly distributed ambulatory network is to create primary care access to ensure people get the regular care, the preventative care, the education and are armed with the tools to be the healthiest versions of themselves.” *

* Updated Nov. 11, 2024, 3 p.m., to correct a quote from Maine.

Click play below listen to interviews about Mercy’s anniversary with Sister Helen Amos and Dr. David Maine on Catholic Review Radio.

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