It was March 22, 1922 when Mrs. Alf Ringling, widow of one of the famous Ringling Circus brothers, offered Father O'Reilly of St. Joseph's Catholic Church her 25-bedroom mansion on Oak Street as a home for boys. But Father had a different idea ... he wanted to create a hospital for Baraboo. Mrs. Ringling agreed and after six different orders of nuns were contacted, the Franciscan Sisters of St. Mary agreed to the challenge, even though they had opened St. Marys Hospital in Madison (50 miles down the road) just 10 years earlier.
Father O'Reilly and Baraboo mayor Adolph Andor promised the sisters that the local community would take care of all the remodeling. In a two-day period, they raised $18,000 of the total cost of $24,000 to transform the grand home into a working hospital. It opened as St. Marys Ringling Hospital in 1922.
Through the years the hospital grew to become an integral part of the Baraboo area as well as the main hospital for Sauk County. By the early 1960s however, the Wisconsin Board of Health determined it was no longer feasible to continually remodel or add on to the turn-of-the-century-Ringling home.
In June of 1963, St. Clare Hospital was built on land donated by Mr. & Mrs. Frank Adamske, and St. Marys Ringling Hospital then became a skilled nursing home, later evolving into the northern retirement home for the sisters. Since its opening day on June 25, 1963, St. Clare has continually developed and provided services in response to the health care needs of residents in the Baraboo, Lake Delton, and Wisconsin Dells area, and the more than 1.5 million annual visitors to the area.
Today, St. Clare offers acute care services as well as chemical dependency treatment, mental health services for older adults, occupational health, home health and hospice care; ambulatory care services including day surgery and hemodialysis; and a radiation oncology center. The hospital has the busiest emergency department outside of Madison, WI and offers urgent care services in the Baraboo and Lake Delton communities.
St. Clare was one of the initial organizers of the Sauk County Collaboration for Health, a Wisconsin Healthy People 2000 initiative.
St. Clare is a member of SSM Health Care (SSMHC), a St. Louis-based health care system, which is among the 10 largest Catholic health care systems in the United States. Local management authority is vested with an Administrative Council, led by hospital president Sandy Anderson. Community leadership is provided to the hospital by a local Advisory Board and members of the St. Clare Health Care Foundation.
SSM Health Care of Wisconsin
A nonprofit corporation called SSM Health Care of Wisconsin encompasses SSMHC (SSM Health Care) holdings in southern Wisconsin. This includes St. Clare Hospital and Health Services in Baraboo; St. Marys Hospital Medical Center in Madison; and two nursing homes, St. Clare Meadows Care Center in Baraboo and St. Marys Care Center in Madison.
SSM Health Care of Wisconsin is a single unified focus for all SSM Health Care ministries in Wisconsin. This fairly new arrangement allows work to be accomplished more efficiently and effectively to achieve program and service integration that provides even better care at a lower cost. It also helps the health care facilities to better fulfill their commitment of truly representing the local communities that serve while maintaining the significant advantages of being part of a larger health care system.
SSM Health Care
Sponsored by the Franciscan Sisters of Mary and based in St. Louis, Missouri, SSM Health Care spans four states - Missouri, Illinois, Wisconsin and Oklahoma. The system has 20 hospitals, three nursing homes, rehab, home care, an information center and a host of additional health-related services. Nearly 5,000 affiliated physicians, 23,000 employees and 5,000 volunteers work together to provide exceptional health care services. In 2002 SSM Health Care became the first health care organization in history to receive the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, the nation's highest award for quality.
Baraboo: The area and its history
In 1884 Baraboo became the famous home of the Ringling Brothers Circus. The circus dominated Baraboo's economy as the Ringlings not only employed hundreds of local citizens, but gave business to farmers, carpenters, painters, blacksmiths, seamstresses and merchants.
Since those early days, Baraboo has continued to grow, but has preserved its architectural heritage in the Downtown and Southside Baraboo Historic Districts.
The population of this scenic community, settled near the popular Devil's Lake, a glacial lake surrounded by grand bluffs, is approximately 10,000. The city is located in Sauk County, which has a population of about 50,000 people. Baraboo has an elementary, middle and senior high school, as well as two private schools.
Located in the southwestern region of Wisconsin, Baraboo is just 50 miles from Madison, 120 miles from Milwaukee, and about 200 miles from both Chicago to the southeast and St. Paul/Minneapolis to the north.
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