page_title: MetroHealth
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: MetroHealth / History
caption_attribution_description: English: A circa-1920 postcard, from Braun Postcard Co., featuring an aerial view of Cleveland City Hospital.
context_page_description: The MetroHealth System is a nationally ranked non-profit, public health care system located in Cleveland, Ohio. Founded in 1837 as City Hospital, The MetroHealth System serves the residents of the city of Cleveland and Cuyahoga County. It is one of the three major health care systems in Cleveland, Ohio, along with Cleveland Clinic and University Hospitals of Cleveland.
  The system provides care at four hospitals, more than 20 health centers and 40 additional sites throughout Cuyahoga County. As of December 2018, it had more than 7,700 employees. The system is the 10th largest employer in Northeast Ohio.
  MetroHealth is a Level I Adult Trauma Center and Level II Pediatric Trauma Center. It offers the only adult and pediatric burn center in the state of Ohio.
  In 1982, MetroHealth established its Metro Life Flight air ambulance service. Metro Life Flight has completed more than 90,000 medical missions, all safely. This air ambulance service is internationally known and has trained crews from Poland to Japan. It uses a fleet of three EC-145 helicopters for its air ambulance service.
context_section_description: City Hospital was founded in 1837 when Cleveland City Council designated control and management of the Township Poor House to the new City Board of Health and renamed the building City Hospital. For more than a decade, the hospital operated in the two-story building, located at the northwest corner of Clinton Street (now East 14th Street) and Sumner Avenue. The site is now part of Erie Street Cemetery.   
  In 1855, the institution, then called City Infirmary, moved to its current location about 2½ miles southwest of downtown on an 80-acre lot on Scranton Road in Brooklyn Township. The new five-story building was “designed to accommodate both the insane of the city and the sick and infirm poor, and furnish also facilities for clinical instruction to the physicians of the day."
  In 1889, a new building, large enough to treat 200 patients, opened on the Scranton Road campus. The building offered the latest in medical science and accommodations (steam heat, feathered pillows and hair mattresses, which replaced straw bedding).
  In the decades around the turn of the century, as Cleveland's population soared from 160,000 in 1880 to almost 800,000 in 1920, City Hospital saw major growth and a shift from an organization primarily serving the city's destitute to an institution providing medical care to all. It also became a robust training ground for doctors and nurses.
  Milestones during this period included the formation of the hospital's first medical staff in 1891, the construction of a children's hospital in 1899 and the construction of a tuberculosis sanitorium in 1902.
  In 1914 City Hospital and the medical school at Western Reserve University (now Case Western Reserve University) forged a formal affiliation, combining research with education and creating a firm basis for modern medical science.
  By City Hospital's 100th anniversary in 1937, its campus on Scranton Road boasted 16 buildings and 1,650 beds, making it the country's sixth largest hospital.
  In 1958, voters of Cuyahoga County approved a measure to transfer City Hospital to county control, and the Cuyahoga County Hospital System was born. It is recognized as the nation's first public hospital system. City Hospital became known as Cleveland Metropolitan General Hospital.
  In 1970, the system opened its nationally renowned burn center.
  In 1972, construction was completed on Cleveland Metropolitan General Hospital's 12-story twin bed towers, capping a decade-long $40 million expansion and renovation of the hospital's campus.
  The Cuyahoga County Hospital System was renamed The MetroHealth System in 1989.
  In May 2014, MetroHealth announced plans for a Campus Transformation project to rebuild the hospital on its main campus.
caption: Aerial view of Cleveland's City Hospital, circa 1920.
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