From 1955 until 1964, the old Deaconess Hospital had served as a nursing home. But, Jane Stahlhut remembers, the old building was "just worn out." The decision was made to build a 100-bed addition to ALMH to become a long-term care facility. "That was Emil’s project all the way," Sniff says. "He had the help of a professional fund-raiser, but he oversaw the project while he continued to run the day-to-day business of the hospital." The new unit opened in October of 1964.

In 1966, 52 of the 100 beds were designated hospital beds. By 1981, because of Medicare funding ceilings and other cost considerations, ALMH discontinued extended care service.

According to Emil (and to many of those who know him) one of the highlights of his career was assisting doctors to form a medical group. "Doctors were the last bulwark of independent entrepreneurs," he says. "They didn’t want to join a group." But encouraged by Emil and his board, they began to see the advantage of combining their practices, and in 1972 many doctors who had once practiced alone joined to form the Abraham Lincoln Medical Group, with offices in ALMH.

The medical group was "the way of the future," Sniff says. "Emil saw that the only way to attract new physicians to a small town was to have an organized group. That way doctors could provide relief for each other and also share professional concerns about patients. Physicians coming out of residency were looking for that. It was the only way to get new young physicians to come to a rural area."

"Emil was ahead of his time," says Bob Albert, an old friend and fellow Rotary member, who has also served on the ALMH board. "He was far advanced in knowledge of what was going to happen in the future in the field of medicine. He was well ahead of other administrators, even those in bigger hospitals. He was aware of programs that could provide government money to benefit the hospital, and he applied for these funds early on."

Albert also remembers that Emil had the respect of his peers throughout the state. "When I was going to hospital functions and meetings at the state level, wherever administrators were gathered, people would say, ‘You’re lucky you have such a fellow as Emil running your hospital.’"

Sniff agrees that the ALHM administrator was very well respected in the industry. "Emil was a member of the Illinois Hospital Association Board of Trustees for several years. He was also on the Illinois Department of Public Health Hospital Licensing Board, an appointment by the governor’s office. Those are prestigious positions. I’m sure he had opportunities to go elsewhere and chose not to. He found satisfaction in what he did and the people he worked with," Sniff says.

"A lot of very positive things happened as a result of the formation of the Abraham Lincoln Medical Group," says Jim White, manager of the outpatient pharmacy at ALMH. The medical group brought together doctors who had been practicing alone to practice together at ALMH. (Later the doctors’ group moved out of the hospital and became the Family Medical Group.)

"It provided the base to attract new talent and helped us get specialists to come to our small, rural community. In the early days, if a patient wanted to see an orthopedic surgeon or a dermatologist, that patient would have to go to a bigger city. With the group, different specialists found it was worth their time to come here once a week to see patients. This was especially good for older people.

"Also, because of the formation of the group, we had physicians on-site and had 24-hour coverage in the emergency room. Early on, Emil saw that a hospital needed that. And Emil, Dr. Gene Blaum and James Strickland were instrumental in setting up a very progressive, well-trained paramedic system," White explains.

"In the early days, paramedics were employees of the hospital. When not giving care at the scene, they worked in the emergency room. But even though they are no longer part of the hospital, the standard of excellence of the paramedics in Lincoln and Logan County is still alive and well. If you go to other communities and assume you will find the same level of expertise, you may be disappointed. The standard was established in Emil’s time, and today we still enjoy that standard as a community."

(To be continued)

Emil came as CEO of the old Deaconess Hospital, specifically to oversee the merger of Deaconess with the new Abraham Lincoln Memorial Hospital. Deaconess, located at the corner of Seventh and Maple Streets (on what is now a parking lot), had opened its doors in 1902.

Before World War II, the Deaconess board had started planning to expand the hospital, but during wartime no new building projects were possible because all of America’s resources were needed for the war effort. But in 1948, with the Hill-Burton Act, federal money became available to build hospitals in rural areas. The Deaconess board set out to hire a professional administrator, one who had education and experience. Emil Stahlhut met all their qualifications.

Abraham Lincoln Memorial Hospital, with Emil at the helm, opened on April 8, 1954, with a maternity ward, a surgery ward and 100 beds. And instead of staying three or four years, Emil stayed for 30, retiring in 1983 after a career that brought the Lincoln area a level of excellence in health care not always found in a small rural community.

Emil was born on a farm in Madison County. After graduating from Edwardsville High School, he went to Elmhurst College in Elmhurst. There he met Jane Sherman of Oak Park. They were married in 1941, and he was drafted into the U. S. Army in 1942, after he had finished all the work for a master’s degree in social work except for his thesis.

"The Army didn’t know what to do with a social worker, so they put me in the medical department," he says. He became a captain in the Medical Administration Corps, and, he remembers, "By the time I got out of the Army I had been in the medical field longer than in social work."

A new field was opening up, and Emil was interested, so he got a degree in hospital administration at Northwestern University in Evanston. He served as a medical administrative officer at Hines Veterans Hospital in Maywood, then went to Mount Sinai Hospital in Chicago as assistant administrator. After that, the Stahlhuts went to Maquoketa, Iowa, where Emil opened a hospital. They stayed for three years, then came to Lincoln.

When he became the administrator at Abraham Lincoln Memorial Hospital (ALMH), Emil "did it all," says David Sniff, his first administrative assistant. "From the opening of the hospital until 1963, when Jim LaMothe became the first fiscal officer, Emil did everything, from payroll to ordering supplies and drugs to the finances -- whatever had to be done," Sniff recalls. "He was very disciplined, very hardworking." (Sniff himself came on board in 1974, left in 1980, then came back in January of 1983, when Emil retired, and stayed until 1995.)

(To be continued)