In 1909, when the University Hospitals first opened their doors in an old fraternity house, patients were offered care for free. In the Report of the Medical School to the President of 1912-1913, Dr. Richard Olding Beard expressed concern pertaining to the growth of both the inpatient and outpatient services. The hospital had a waiting list that ranged between 20 and 30, while the clinic was congested. Dr. Beard stated that it was not possible to treat all of the patients who presented at the clinic or hospital. In the 1913-1914 Report of the Medical School to the President, the Outpatient Department cited 13,575 new patients and 47,347 visits, averaging around 155 visits per day.

This congestion led to a $0.10 per patient per ambulatory visit charge to be instated beginning July 1, 1915. There was also a prescription fee for patients requiring prescriptions. The inpatient wards were not far behind in leaving the “free for service” model, with approval from the Board of Regents coming in the 1918-1919 school year for 50 beds in Elliot Memorial Hospital to be used by patients who would pay a per diem charge.

In 1921, the County-State plan for caring for indigent patients who were residents of Minnesota was passed into law, requiring that patients be referred by their family physicians and be certified for care by the Judge of Probate of the county of residence prior to visiting the clinic. In 1923, this was amended to designate the county commissioner as the official authorized to certify eligibility for care, which meant that the University Hospitals could now bill the county for half of the patient’s bill. The balance was billable to the state because of state appropriations.

Whether the cost was free, $0.10 per patient per visit, or a small per diem, visiting the University Hospitals was a pretty good deal.

Primary source of information was Masters of Medicine by J. Arthur Myers.

In 1946, an outbreak of polio spread across the United States and Minnesota was not isolated from this epidemic.

At the University, the Minnesota Poliomyelitis Research Committee, a team of medical researchers from a variety of disciplines under the direction of Maurice Visscher, created sophisticated surveys and data sets based on this epidemic to better understand the disease.

As part of this effort, the University Hospitals provided care to polio patients, both acute and chronic, as a public health service and a means to collect research data. Many of these patients were cared for off-site at the Fort Snelling army station hospital. Activities at the fort quickly came to a close in 1946 after the drawdown of troops after World War II. This drawdown, however, created a new opportunity for the University that proved to be a timely resource.

In December 1946 the University entered an agreement with the War Assets Department to “enter upon, occupy, and use” the facilities and grounds of the Gopher Ordnance Works, a war-time munitions plant and barracks, in Rosemount, MN for the cost of $1.

On January 3, 1947 the University moved non-acute polio patients to the new location and opened the Rosemount Hospital. The Rosemount location served as a hospital until June 30, 1948. During that time, it saw 269 patients for a total of 33,014 patient days.

Much of the above information and more on the University’s response to the 1946 polio epidemic can be found in the “Biennial Report of the President of the University of Minnesota to the Board of Regents 1946-1948.” Read the full report below.

November 8th marked the 115th anniversary of the German physicist Wilhelm Röntgen’s detection of x-rays while conducting an experiment in his laboratory. The medical application of Röntgen’s x-rays as a diagnostic tool was immediately apparent.

Within a few months of the publication of his findings, a physics professor and football coach at the University of Minnesota, Frederick “Fred” Jones, acquired the equipment to duplicate Röntgen’s results. By March of 1896, Prof. Jones began providing campus lectures on the properties of x-rays and demonstrating the ability to determine densities of liquids and minerals, to see a pair of glasses within a leather purse, and to show the skeleton structure of frogs and fishes with use of the newly discovered rays. That April, Jones lectured medical students on the the use of x-rays to take pictures of tuberculosis patients.

In October 1896, Dean Millard of the Department of Medicine requested Prof. Jones assist in locating bullets in two patients at the City Hospital of St. Paul. Both were located successfully allowing for more precise surgical operations.

A decade later, the construction of the Elliot Memorial Hospital on campus highlighted the need for an on-site x-ray service. In 1912 Dr. Frank Bissell became the first radiographer for the University Hospitals. In 1923 the hospitals established a Division of Roentgenology with a focus of diagnostic and x-ray therapy.

To learn more about the history of radiology at the University of Minnesota, see the 1967 “A Brief History of the Department of Radiology” by Drs. Stephen Kieffer, Eugene Gedgaudas, and Harold Peterson.