Baby Pumpkins at CHI St. Luke’s Health


Photo: CHI St. Luke's Health Memorial
Photo: CHI St. Luke’s Health Memorial

Guests and patients at CHI St. Luke’s Health Memorial have been seeing little pumpkins leaving the hospital throughout the month of October. Thanks to the creative efforts of local volunteer Melanie East, babies born at Memorial during October have added bright orange crocheted caps to their wardrobes. Ms. East and her mother decided several years ago to donate their handiwork to others in the community instead of exchanging Christmas gifts each year. This year Ms. East chose to make the pumpkin hats in honor of her mother and donate them to the newborn families at CHI St. Luke’s Health.

About CHI St. Luke’s Health Memorial

CHI St. Luke’s Health Memorial paves the way for quality, innovative health care in East Texas and provides more than a quarter of a million patient services each year.

Our mission is to provide quality health care to the communities it serves. With hospitals in Lufkin, Livingston, San Augustine and Memorial Specialty – the area’s only long-term acute care hospital – CHI St. Luke’s Health Memorial provides millions of dollars in charity care and community support each year.

CHI St. Luke’s Health Memorial offers a wide array of services, including the area’s first dedicated heart and stroke care facility and radiation oncology at the Temple Cancer Center. It is also known for the area’s only comprehensive diabetes, heart and stroke education center. Other specialty areas include imaging, orthopedic care, women’s services, inpatient and outpatient rehabilitation, homecare, wound care and hyperbaric oxygen therapy, kidney & diabetes treatment, sleep disorders treatment and express lab.

About Catholic Health Initiatives

Catholic Health Initiatives, a nonprofit, faith-based health system formed in 1996 through the consolidation of four Catholic health systems, expresses its mission each day by creating and nurturing healthy communities in the hundreds of sites across the nation where it provides care. One of the nation’s largest health systems, Englewood, Colo.-based CHI operates in 19 states and comprises 105 hospitals, including four academic health centers and major teaching hospitals and 30 critical-access facilities; community health-services organizations; accredited nursing colleges; home-health agencies; and other facilities that span the inpatient and outpatient continuum of care.

In fiscal year 2014, CHI provided $910 million in charity care and community benefit – a nearly 20% increase over the previous year – for programs and services for the poor, free clinics, education and research. Charity care and community benefit totaled more than $1.7 billion with the inclusion of the unpaid costs of Medicare. The health system, which generated revenues of almost $13.9 billion in fiscal year 2014, has total assets of $21.8 billion. Learn more at www.catholichealthinitiatives.com.

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