Program Organization Following Corporate Merger of Community Hospitals

To compress the history of developments leading to the creation of the Wilmington Medical Center and then to comment further upon program development since that creation, and to do all of this briefly presents me with many problems. I have therefore chosen to present only a summary of the history leading to our development.

Between the period from 1959 through 1963, in Wilmington among the boards of directors of three equal-sized community general hospitals, there was a preoccupation with rising operating and capital costs and with the deterioration of medical education as measured in terms of the quantity and quality of intern and resident applicants, as well as the quality of ongoing medical education for the members of the three medical staffs. Efforts were made through a mechanism of cooperation, not only to resolve some of these problems but to examine their implications and possible new and somewhat startling methods