Alton Memorial Hospital was founded on a dream. During the 1920's, a woman named Alice E. Smith, widow of William E. Smith, founder of the Illinois Glass Company in Alton, Ill., dreamed of building a full-service, modern hospital to serve the community that she called home for most of her life.
Smith died in 1931, but her dream lived on through her two daughters, Eunice Smith of Alton and Ellen Smith Hatch of Springfield, Ill. In 1936, Eunice Smith and Ellen Smith Hatch founded the hospital and gave it to the community as a memorial to their parents. Ground was broken for Alton Memorial Hospital on Sept. 20, 1936, and the building was dedicated Nov. 2, 1937.
Alton Memorial underwent four major expansions between 1942 and 1977. In 1966, a freestanding 62-bed extended care facility, Eunice Smith Home, was opened. In the mid 1990's, the hospital added a new, high-tech surgical center, a new emergency department and a new Women's Health and Childbirth Center. In 2010 the hospital opened the Duncan Wing, featuring 76 private patient rooms with state-of-the-art technology. In 2014, with deliveries on the rise, the Women's Health and Childbirth Center was renovated to add more patient rooms and a new entry in the Smith Wing.
Today, Alton Memorial Hospital is a JCAHO-accredited, full-service hospital serving the River Bend area of southwestern Illinois. Licensed for 209 beds, the hospital offers a wide range of quality health care services, including the area's only Cancer Center with True Beam technology, the only open and 3T MRI through Twin Rivers MRI Center, CT services, PET imaging, nuclear medicine and other advanced medical imaging services, as well as physical, speech and occupational therapies. The hospital also operates a 24-hour emergency center and the area's only hospital-based ambulance service.
Alton Memorial Hospital is recognized for its heart services, orthopedic surgery, oncology services, women's health services, outpatient surgery and testing, gastroenterology, pain management, pulmonary medicine, rehabilitation and sports medicine. The Hospital provides numerous health education and wellness programs to people in a five-county area.