By Rita McInerney

A life-size statue of St. Joseph, patron of the sick, greets everyone entering the front lobby of St. Joseph’s Hospital in Dahlonega. On the wall next to the tan colored statue is a small Mercy cross. The cross and the statue symbolize the new spirit at the former Lumpkin County Hospital crowning Mountain Drive.

New ownership became official Dec. 31 with a formal document signing at the hospital. The 55-bed facility built in 1976, has been managed by St. Joseph’s Hospital of Atlanta since last Aug. 1

What prompted the Atlanta institution to purchase, for $2,800,000, the hospital built a short decade ago by the Lumpkin County Hospital Authority? To expand “the accomplishments of the Sisters of Mercy begun in Atlanta in 1880 to provide health care and education for the poor and the afflicted,” according to Tommy Reddin, new administrator of the hospital.

“We’re here to provide service to the people of the community and quality health care. If we do that we will make money. We must prove it to the community. Until we do, they will continue to go elsewhere,” Reddin said.

He gave the occupancy rate of the hospital as 27 percent. On one day last week, the patient log in the lobby listed 16 patients, most of them Baptist. There was one Catholic.

Reddin said a lot of doctors have come and gone over the 10 years since the hospital opened. This caused the residents to lose confidence and use the two hospitals in Gainesville or Atlanta hospitals. “The ones we have here now, by and large, are very good physicians,” Reddin said. But the task now is to recruit more qualified doctors, by advertising, using “head hunter” firms, and by word of mouth.

The hospital service area covers Dawson, Union, White and Forsyth counties along with Lumpkin. Forsyth, he pointed out, is “really exploding” as a growth area.

“The preferential option to the poor” stressed in the forthcoming bishops’ letter on the economy has been motivating the Sisters of Mercy of the Baltimore Province in their mission to the sick and the poor since 1880 when they opened St. Joseph’s Infirmary in Atlanta. That is their goal in Dahlonega, Reddin repeated several times during a recent interview with The Georgia Bulletin.

What services are provided for the poor? “Anything we offer to the rich.” Are the services free? “If needed,” he replied.

“That doesn’t mean that we don’t run it (hospital) as a business. It is not a charity hospital.” There is money set aside each year to provide care for people in need, the hospital administrator said.

Under the federal Hill-Burton law which has been making loans for hospital building and expansion for several decades, the hospital is required to use a certain percent of its gross income for treatment of the medically indigent. St. Joseph’s of Dahlonega has budgeted $60,000 a year, an amount which exceeds federal requirements.

Under terms of the purchase agreement, a $1 million trust fund was established and the interest will be used to provide care for the medically indigent.

The “medically indigent,” Reddin said, are the people “in between” those qualified for Medicare and the “truly indigent” who are taken care of by Medicaid. An example of “medically indigent” could be a family living on an income of $10,000 unable to afford hospital insurance.

Reddin, formerly administrator of Scottish Rite Children’s Hospital in Atlanta, explained the “sponsorship” of the Sisters of Mercy: “We use their name and follow their principles. But sponsorship does not mean they are going to give us money to operate. They control acquisition and disposal of assets. All of it has to operate in accordance with canon law as well as civil law. By sponsoring they allow members of the order to work here.”

One member, Sister M. Marcia McKinley, is patient advocate and chaplain.

“I hope we can make it attractive enough to attract at least one more member of the order,” in any area of hospital work, physician nurse, social worker, administrator, Reddin said.

The Catholic presence is evident from Highway 60 where a sign identifies St. Joseph’s Hospital of Dahlonega. Once around a curve of Mountain Drive the red cross and name are immediately and highly visible above the entrance of the modern concrete building. Inside, administrative offices and cafeteria are on the lower level, or first floor, the emergency room, patient admitting and billing areas are on the ground, or second floor, and the patient rooms and surgery on the third floor. The fourth floor is a huge shell ready to be adapted according to future needs.

“The convenience of the two hospitals, located at either end of Georgia Highway 400, only 50 minutes apart, will provide for a comprehensive health care delivery network which will accommodate patient care needs of this high-growth area,” Kenneth E. Wheeler, who serves as president of both hospitals, said in a press release announcing the formal purchase on Dec. 31.

Sister Michelle Carroll, vice president for sponsorship at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Atlanta, said the hospital is in an area that has been designated by the federal government as “medically underserved." This makes it attractive to us to try and keep quality health care in the area. The resources of St. Joseph’s Hospital will help make that difference.” She also is hopeful for the opportunity to work in collaboration with North Georgia College, a near neighbor of the hospital.

Above all, Sister Michelle said, the Sisters of Mercy “strive to have our ideals and values permeate all aspects of health care work. We went the hospital to serve the needs of the community.”

The hospital, with few maternity patients, has five rooms for obstetrics. “We don’t do abortions and we don’t do sterilizations,” Reddin said. “The state or federal government don’t mandate that we do so. Both recognize that Catholic hospitals just don’t do those.”

The hospital employs the full-time equivalent of 97 people, including 18 registered nurses and five licensed practical nurses. There is a food service manager and a consulting dietician from St. Joseph’s in Atlanta. The cheerful cafeteria serves appetizing food and is well patronized by hospital personnel as well as people from nearby North Georgia College and other locals.

Dr. George Faile, general surgeon, is the new hospital chief of staff. He has been in the community many years, Reddin said, and earlier spent 26 years as a missionary doctor in Africa. The 10 doctors in the community are on the staff and there are three consultants who hold out-patients clinics each week, two cardiologists and one urologist.

Reddin said there was very little opposition to a Catholic hospital in the predominantly Baptist mountain area. At a public hearing held July 9, he said the courthouse was crowded with people favoring the purchase. It was “beautiful” he said. There was only one person speaking against the acquisition.

Cullen Larson, attorney for Lumpkin County and administrative assistant, explained why the county sold the hospital, “Because we were looking down the road, because we wanted to keep a quality hospital in Lumpkin County. In order to keep our hospital we had to sell it.” With the trend in the country today toward affiliations, he said a small rural hospital is not likely to survive unless it is affiliated with a larger hospital.

“St. Joseph’s proposal had all the intangibles of a long list of good quality health care over a long period of time,” Larson said. The fact that the affiliated hospitals would be at “either end of what’s going to be one of the busiest growth corridors” was another consideration.

A Catholic, Larson said he believes the Catholics in the community are the most surprised of all at the overwhelming support the sale has received locally.

Questioned about the low occupancy rate he mentioned the historical trade pattern that exists in the North Georgia mountains; “If you’ve really got something important you need to go someplace else.” This attitude sent residents to the hospitals in Gainesville and Atlanta.

“I think St. Joseph’s has the advantage simply because it is St. Joseph’s.” He is confident that the capacity to offer modern medical techniques within a 50-minute drive will attract patients to St. Joseph’s in Dahlonega.

Staffers are making trips to the “parent” hospital, Sister Marcia said, to talk to department heads and to be briefed on new equipment and techniques. “There is a good exchange, any new tapes and educational material they get are available to us,” she said.

She admits to being new to her assignment, that of patient advocate and chaplain, but sees her job as providing comfort and concern to the patient and the family. She is ready to listen, to call in the patient’s minister. “I don’t see myself going in with a badge saying I’m a Catholic sister.” She is eager for the time when the patients see her as “another human being.”

Sister Marcia came up in August from Birmingham, Ala., where she had been a director of religious education, and took a three-month program in clinical pastoral care at Scottish Rite Hospital. She is just now settling into her sunny third floor office with magnificent views of the mountains.

“Slowly moving into making it more Catholic,” she expects to have crosses at the ends of the corridors and install a more fitting background for the statue of St. Joseph in the front lobby.

The statue is silent tribute to the continuity of the Sisters of Mercy mission. It has had three homes since 1954 when it was presented to St. Joseph’s Infirmary by the Student Society. From St. Mary’s Hall in downtown Atlanta it traveled to the modern hospital on Peachtree Dunwoody Road and now is a welcoming Catholic “presence” in St. Joseph’s of Dahlonega.