Iowa Lutheran
Hospital has a long history of serving the Des Moines community and
central Iowa with a caring atmosphere. The hospital has 234 staffed beds and
specializes in cardiovascular care, maternity and women's services, emergency
and trauma treatment, chemical dependency treatment, behavioral medicine,
general surgery, orthopedics, critical care, older adult services and home
health care. Today Iowa Lutheran averages more than 12,000 inpatient admissions
and 250,000 outpatient admissions every year.
Established in 1914 by
Swedish-American Lutherans, the hospital's services soon expanded beyond the
walls of its original building and denominational origins. The hospital's
history has been filled with firsts. It founded America's first polio clinic
(1942), Des Moines' first kidney dialysis center (1971) and Iowa's first
multiple sclerosis center (1988).
Education has always played an
important role at Iowa Lutheran. The hospital established its School of Nursing
in 1914, training many generations of Iowa nurses. Many of Iowa Lutheran's
graduates served in the U.S. Cadet Nurse Corps during World War II. For
physicians, the hospital's Family Practice Residency Program recently celebrated
its 25th anniversary. This highly-regarded program has trained hundreds of
family practice physicians who have gone on to practice in towns all over Iowa
and the Midwest. Iowa Lutheran's unique environment gives these residents a wide
variety of medical experiences through a tightly knit, community-based
program.
Iowa Lutheran is also home to
Iowa's largest, private hospital-based mental health facility. Combining
advanced medical care with psychiatric diagnostic and treatment capabilities, it
addresses mental illness and emotional or behavioral problems alike. Lutheran's
capabilities include child and adolescent psychiatry along with a dual
psychiatric and chemical dependency unit for adolescents.
Powell Chemical Dependency Center at Iowa
Lutheran has been a leader in Iowa and across the nation in developing treatment
programs for chemically affected people. The center has treated more than 25,000
individuals in more than 25 years of service.
The newly renovated
outpatient services area at Iowa Lutheran consists of a variety of outpatient
service departments including regional infusion therapy, X-ray, outpatient
surgery and endoscopy. Iowa Lutheran also specializes in maternity and women's
services, cardiac rehab, cardiovascular services and emergency
services.
In the late 1980s, Iowa Lutheran pioneered "Birth Day Suites,"
allowing mothers to labor and deliver in the same comfortable room. In 1990,
physicians began to practice open-heart surgeries at Iowa Lutheran; over the
next decade, over 1,500 open heart procedures were performed at the hospital.
Iowa Lutheran has an outstanding hospital auxiliary, one of the oldest
in the nation, founded in 1910 prior to the hospital's opening. In addition to
providing many kinds of support services for the hospital, the Auxiliary has
been responsible for several major fundraising efforts-over a million dollars in
the 1990s alone. Recently, Auxiliary dollars have raised funds for the new
surgical waiting room and the breast health center as well as many other areas
of the hospital.
In 1993, Iowa Lutheran Hospital and Iowa Methodist
Medical Center (along with Blank Children's Hospital) merged to form Iowa Health
System, the largest medical service provider in Iowa. Today Iowa Health System
continues to grow, with a goal of providing high quality, accessible medical
care to all Iowans.
