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BERWYN – MacNeal Hospital will be recognized as the recipient of the 10th annual George W. Ashby Award for Business Excellence at the Berwyn Development Corp.'s business community celebration Jan. 16. The event, which will celebrate the recipients of the 35th annual Charles E. Piper Award and the Ashby award, will begin at 5:30 p.m. at FitzGerald's Nightclub & Sidebar, 6615 W. Roosevelt Road, Berwyn.
The George W. Ashby Award for Business Excellence is named after one of Berwyn’s distinguished early architects. Ashby was responsible for the design of every grade school in Berwyn as well as J. Sterling Morton High School.
The award is given annually to a Berwyn-based business that presents a professional and favorable image to Berwyn, provides quality goods or services, maintains a visually appealing space and practices high-quality customer service to its patrons.
With 374 beds, a 2,000-person staff and more than 550 medical professionals, MacNeal Hospital has come a long way from its humble beginnings a century ago. While a lot has changed with MacNeal, its mission of providing quality, compassionate care to patients and the community remains the same.
In 1919, Dr. Arthur MacNeal launched a small practice from the living room of his unassuming, 10-room residence in Berwyn. His patient network boomed, and he quickly outgrew his facility. Five years later, he broke ground on a three-story building a few blocks north – the beginnings of MacNeal Hospital as it is known today.
As Berwyn grew into a thriving town, so did the hospital. By 1929, MacNeal constructed an additional floor onto the original, three-story structure to accommodate increasing demand. Just a decade later, construction began on a new expansion that would add 165 beds to the facility. By the 1940s, MacNeal was the city’s top employer.
In 1969, MacNeal instituted a family practice residency program in Illinois. The program not only helped train future family physicians, it also established MacNeal as a teaching hospital. Today, as a member of Trinity Health and Loyola Medicine, the family practice residency program is just one of many educational programs offered at MacNeal.
The coronary care unit at MacNeal opened in 1964. Its leading-edge technology, state-of-the-art facilities, advanced diagnostics and minimally invasive procedures earned it a spot as one of IBM Watson Health’s top 50 cardiovascular hospitals for the past two years.