The demolition of M Health Fairview Bethesda Hospital will soon be completed.
The former acute and physical rehabilitation facility, located near the State Capitol, closed its doors in November 2020. This marked the end of a nearly 140-year-old history of medical services in downtown St. Paul.
At the height of pandemic, the building was temporarily converted into a COVID Crisis Hospital, then a Ramsey County Homeless Shelter. But Minneapolis-based Fairview plans to build a new mental hospital there.
Bethesda rose from religious roots. The Rev. A.P. Monten of the First Lutheran Church of St. Paul launched medical care in a farmhouse in 1883, deriving its name from the Hebrew word for “House of Mercy.”
Bethesda grew from religious roots The Rev. A. P. Monten of First Lutheran Church of St. Paul began medical care in a farm in 1883. The name was derived from the Hebrew for “House of Mercy.”
First patient
Gustav Svard was found in an isolated shanty in St. Paul, Minnesota, away from his family.
According to the Ramsey County Historical Society, the medical report was written in Swedish and did not specify Svard’s poor living conditions. It stated only that “I won’t try to describe the horrific situation around him.”
Bethesda’s growth would benefit people of all backgrounds, and in 1901 it opened a School of Nursing to serve patients for over a century.
Earl Bakken, an engineer, was able to invent a battery-powered external pacemaker for Warren Mauston. He lived on the East Side of St. Paul. Bakken’s Medtronic medical device manufacturing firm was launched by the breakthrough, which added Bethesda into history.
COVID facility
M Health Fairview converted the former long-term-care/rehabilitation facility into a COVID facility with 90 beds in March 2020. M Health Fairview is a partnership between Fairview and University of Minnesota Physicians, as well as the university. Bethesda transferred its last patient from St. Joseph’s Hospital to Bethesda on November 5, 2020.
The Ramsey County medical campus, just north of State Capitol grounds, has been leased to the county for several months. It was used as a shelter for the homeless and for COVID respite care.
During the pandemic Fairview also restructured the medical services of nearby St. Joseph’s Hospital, on 10th Street. The hospital shed its emergency rooms and other critical care function.
The Fairview Community Health and Wellness Hub is a new facility that houses a primary-care clinic, food distribution services, outpatient addiction treatment, senior day care and long-term acute rehabilitation for patients in the same style as the old Bethesda Hospital.
Fairview Health Services, a Tennessee-based company, and Acadia Healthcare formed a partnership at the Bethesda location to finance and run a new inpatient mental health facility with 144 beds. Construction should begin this summer.