In 1907, the year Henry Ford manufactured the Model R and the first automatic washer/dryer was introduced, New Jersey Zinc Company officials turned the shovel of dirt to start construction of the 11-bed Palmerton Hospital.

A typhoid epidemic in 1906 had ravaged the community, striking 98 people. By 1926, the private, not-for-profit hospital, which served zinc company employees and their families, had expanded to accommodate 70 beds. In 1963, the company turned over the facility to the community.Seventeen years before, in 1946, community leaders in Lehighton, concerned that the closest public hospital was in Coaldale, 18 miles away, agreed to build their own facility, one that would serve the entirety of Carbon County. They named the hospital Gnaden Huetten, after a Moravian mission. The name meant "Huts of Mercy."Ground was broken for the hospital three years later, and the 52-bed Gnaden Huetten Memorial Hospital opened in 1951, as atomic testing took place in the Nevada desert and President Harry S. Truman drew fire as the Korean War raged on. Today, the acute-care, not-for-profit hospital offers 111 beds.In the ensuing decades, both hospitals grew, offering more and better services to provide care to increasing numbers of patients.A strong jointureOn July 1, 2004, the hospitals joined to form the Blue Mountain Health System. But the going wasn't easy. A year later, the hospitals had lost about $10 million, and Blue Mountain Health System brought in a hospital fiscal trouble-shooting company, Wellspring Partners Ltd. of Chicago, for a short period of time. In fiscal year 2006-07, it ran a $5.5 million deficit.Blue Mountain Health System CEO Andrew E. Harris, who was hired in October 2006, said at a news conference a month later that he felt confident the $81 million hospital system would continue to pull itself out of the fiscal doldrums.Harris, who at the time had more than 25 years of experience operating hospitals, described his area of expertise as "turning around community hospitals."Blue Mountain Health System, one of the county's largest employers with 1,100 workers, has continued to thrive under Harris' tenure.The first indication of that turnaround came in April 2008, when Blue Mountain Health System posted its first profit, with a net operating income of about $220,000 for the first quarter.the improvement continued, and Blue Mountain Health System ended this fiscal year with a $1.1 million gain.Harris attributed the positive financial news to a combination of factors, ranging from the hiring of more doctors, who brought in more patients, to Blue Mountain Health System's 2009 affiliation with Lehigh Valley Health Network. The organizations had already worked together since 2004 to provide advanced cardiac and stroke care.That affiliation has brought a number of benefits to Blue Mountain Health System patients, including telemedicine for infectious diseases, collaborative emergency departments and burn treatment.Telemedicine is a particular boon to Carbon County's older residents."Telemedicine patients can have access to treatment locally instead of being transferred to another hospital. But if they do need to be transferred. It's a very quick, seamless process," Blue Mountain Health System spokeswoman Lisa Johnson said. "Patients appreciate that."Blue Mountain has also invested in more new technology, including a 32-slice CT scanner, a roomier MRI and digital mammogram equipment. It also offers a dental van to provide services to low-income children, and operates a nursing and rehabilitation center, The Summit at Blue Mountain.Sustained growthFive years ago, Harris announced that "Blue Mountain is here to stay.""We continue to go through a major financial and business turnaround," he said. "We can finally say, for the fiscal year that just ended on June 30, the hospital system has grown its revenues to almost $100 million, has increased its employee base to over 1,100 employees, and we closed the year with a financial profit of a little over $1.1 million.""Going from a $10 million loss to a $1.1 million profit, we're probably one of the highest-percentage improved hospitals in the state of Pennsylvania," Harris said.Johnson explained that "nonprofit hospitals must meet a long list of governmental regulations. The most important is the hospital's use of its profit, or any excess of revenues over expenses, for the benefit of the hospital."Further, Blue Mountain Health System's goal of high-quality health care is being met."Part of the significant turnaround is our constant commitment to quality," Harris said. "With that, we just finished, for the third year in a row, a deficiency -free survey by the Department of Health at our Gnaden Huetten campus.Last year, we completed our second year in a row for deficiency-free surveys at our Palmerton campus."On top of that, the Joint Commission, which is our national accrediting agency, we went through two deficiency-free surveys at both hospitals. That confirms the high level of quality at both of our institutions," he said. "The deficiency-free surveys are unprecedented. In my 35-year career, I have never gone through deficiency free surveys until I came to Blue Mountain Health System."Not only do patients benefit from the high standards employees do, too."Now, it's a great place to work. It's an organization that's solvent, that's growing, that's rewarding our employees for hard work," he said. "The way we're doing that is that all our employees will be receiving wage increases in September. All of our employees just received a bonus for us showing a profit, and also meeting quality standards in five different areas.The areas are quality, service, people, growth and financials."We call them the five pillars of success," Johnson said.Building a solid futureHarris expects that turnaround to continue."We have plans to continue to identify programs through which we provide excellent patient care, and expand them as centers of excellence," he said.He cited as examples Blue Mountain Health System's behavioral health programs."We continue to grow that service because of the large need in Carbon County and the surrounding areas. It's all about community need. We now have 22 inpatient beds at Gnaden Huetten, 20 older-adult inpatient beds at Palmerton Hospital, an outpatient partial care program in Bowmanstown, and we're looking to add nine more beds on the older adult unit in Palmerton by January 2013," he said.More patients mean more staff."In the last five years, we've been able to recruit probably about 45 new subspecialists and specialists to our two hospitals," Harris said. "There are medical specialties that we are now providing full-time, on-site, that we have never had before."He offered as examples neurology, pulmonary medicine, infectious disease, and hospitalists."On top of that, we've contracted with a radiology group for 75 radiologists, all in sub-speciality fields, to read all of our (radiological) studies," he said. "In December, we partnered with Lehigh Valley Health Network in providing physician services in our two emergency departments. So now, our emergency physicians are employed through Blue Mountain Health System, and managed by Lehigh Valley Health Network. So, the quality of care is at a higher level."Why drive 35 miles when you can come to your closest hospital and receive both local care and tertiary care if you need it, and be transferred when appropriate?" Harris said.To what does Harris attribute Blue Mountain Health System's continuing success?"It's a lot of pieces, but I think the biggest is the community believing in us, and our health system supporting the community," he said. "As a not-for-profit health system, we are only here for the community. The community has embraced us, and has utilized our services, which allows us to continue to build those services in the region."