Lucas County Hospital/Maumee Valley Hospital School of Nursing Class Composites

Maumee Valley Hospital opened in 1931 at Detroit and Arlington as the Lucas County Hospital. It replaced the Lucas County General Hospital, built in 1898, which had replaced the Lucas County Infirmary, established in 1869. All were public facilities built primarily to serve the county’s poor and indigent. In 1944, Lucas County Hospital was renamed Maumee Valley Hospital. In 1948, it added a contagious disease hospital just in time for an influx of polio cases. In 1961, the first microsurgery in Ohio was performed at Maumee Valley, and in 1962, the hospital purchased a hyperbaric chamber for treating tetanus, gangrene, and diseases that threatened limbs. The hospital had its own nursing school until 1972. While governed by an autonomous Board of Trustees, it remained county-owned and continued to mainly treat indigent patients (in 1968 over 80 percent fell into that category) and was cash-strapped for most of its existence.

In June 1969, Lucas County signed an agreement with the new Medical College of Ohio designating Maumee Valley as the college’s primary teaching hospital. In addition to a 200-bed hospital, Maumee Valley included the former Lucas County Home for the Aged and an unfinished extended care unit. In December 1970, the college purchased the hospital and assumed partial management responsibility, and in November 1971 the hospital changed its name to the Medical College of Ohio Hospital. MCO took over full control in 1973.

When acquired by MCO, Maumee Valley Hospital had a budget deficit of $1 million, outdated infrastructure, and wards with more empty beds than patients. MCO phased out the long-term care unit and renovated the existing buildings. Extensive upgrades were made to ambulatory care clinics, medical and surgical wards, and diagnostic and treatment facilities. MCO opened the first pediatric walk-in clinic in Toledo and a new outpatient clinic. In 1972, MCO surgeons performed the first kidney transplant in northwest Ohio. In 1975, the hospital opened a comprehensive epilepsy treatment center and had construction plans in place for a new radiation treatment center. In 1978, it acquired a computerized axial tomography (CAT) scanner.

While upgrading the old hospital, MCO proceeded with plans to build a new 258-bed hospital on its permanent campus that was taking shape about a mile west. A fundraising campaign helped support construction costs, and in 1975 ground was broken for the new $46 million Medical College of Ohio Hospital. It was dedicated in November 1979.

(The history of Lucas County Hospital/Maumee Valley Hospital was written by Barbara Floyd, as part of the exhibition catalog, “Medicine on the Maumee: A History of Healthcare in Northwest Ohio”, 2012. For more information on nursing schools in Toledo, see “Caps, Capes, and Caring: the Legacy of Diploma Nursing Schools in Toledo”, 2018, available through the University of Toledo Press.)