Wheaton doctor reflects on 50 years of CDH in Winfield

John Messitt was a young doctor in 1964 when he moved to Wheaton with plans to open a private practice.

That same year, a former tuberculosis sanitarium in nearby Winfield was being transformed into a 113-room community hospital.

Then on Sept. 16, 1964 — the same day Messitt achieved his personal goal — a community that long wanted a hospital finally realized its dream when Central DuPage Hospital opened its doors.

In the decades that followed, Messitt, an obstetrician and gynecologist, would go on to deliver thousands of babies at CDH. He also would see that acute care facility with 66 doctors grow into a full-service hospital with 347 beds and more than 1,200 doctors.

With CDH celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, Messitt recently chatted with the Daily Herald about the hospital's humble beginnings.

“When I went there initially, it was this two-story facility with two wings,” Messitt said.

The 80-year-old Wheaton resident said there also were some other buildings from when the site was used as a tuberculosis sanitarium. He also remembers the large amount of open space that once surrounded the hospital.

“It had lots of land, and the hospital kind of sat up on a hill,” Messitt said. “If you look at it today, a lot of that extra land is gone because we've had different additions. So the appearance of the hospital has changed drastically. You wouldn't recognize the place from before.”

The seed for CDH was planted in 1958, when a Wheaton Kiwanis Club committee sponsored a meeting of 100 civic leaders to form interest for a proposed hospital, officials said. In August of that year, the Central DuPage Hospital Association was created by residents from Winfield, Wheaton, Warrenville, West Chicago, Glen Ellyn and Lombard.

“Physicians and people in the community who wanted to have a hospital nearby formed the association,” Messitt said.

Back then, those residents needed to travel to Geneva or Elmhurst to get general medical care, according to Dr. Kevin Most, CDH's vice president of medical affairs.

“So you had individuals in the community going to door to door to collect money to buy a hospital,” Most said.

“That's why CDH is an asset of the community,” he added. “It's is a nonprofit hospital that's essentially owned by the community. There's no shareholders. There's no stock. All the profits are reinvested back into the hospital and back into the community.”

Fortunately for everyone who contributed to the hospital fund drive, changes in the way tuberculosis was treated prompted the Winfield Sanatorium to be closed and put up for sale. The CDHA acquired the 44-acre parcel and its buildings in 1962.

The next two years were spent revamping the facility into a general hospital. During that time, Messitt completed his residency at Cook County Hospital and decided he wanted open a practice in Wheaton.

He said he learned about CDH from fellow doctors going to work there. “I thought to myself, 'This is where I wanted to practice,'” he said.

Being a doctor in 1964 was different from the way it is now.

For example, 80 percent of CDH's doctors were in general practice when the hospital opened. Only 20 percent of them were specialists.

It also was all hands on deck when it came to staffing the emergency room.

Even Messitt as an obstetrician was required to do rotations in the emergency room department. That's because all the doctors at CDH were assigned to work days in the emergency room.

“That would be unheard of today,” Most said. “Now we have only board certified emergency room doctors treating patients in the emergency room.”

Of course, the role of the hospital was different 50 years ago. It was solely to take care of the community's acute care needs.

“They delivered babies,” Most said. “They treated patients with pneumonia. But they certainly weren't doing joint replacements. They weren't doing open heart surgeries.”

If someone needed specialty care back then, they had to go to downtown Chicago to get it.

That changed as CDH grew and attracted more doctors.

Less than five years after it opened, CDH broke ground on an expansion that more than doubled the hospital's size. In December 1976, a second campus expansion was completed. It added a five-story, 112-bed patient pavilion. A third major construction program started in 1984 focused on the “Birthplace” wing.

During that time, CDH would achieve a number of “firsts” for DuPage, including the county's first total hip replacement operation. An open heart surgery program was established in 1977, and the neonatal intensive care unit opened in 1979.

Most said the hospital benefited from having leaders who were always looking ahead. He said those leaders used the profits CDH made to improve the facility, acquire new technology and attract quality doctors.

“The people who were driving to Chicago to get treatment were doing so because those hospitals had technology that wasn't available in the suburbs,” Most said. “Once you have leadership that says we can invest in the technology and attract those physicians, then why would those patients go anywhere else?”

Messitt made his own mark when he became the first doctor at the hospital to perform a minimally invasive diagnostic and surgical laparoscopy at a time when that technology was groundbreaking, according to the hospital's website.

“Medicine progressed, and those of us who were there and doing the day-to-day work decided we needed certain additions to the hospital,” Messitt said. Those “additions“ weren't just new buildings but included the hiring of new doctors with various specialties.

“Then we did our best to get the best — and we did,” he added. “We got the best, and that was the secret to the success at that place.”

The ongoing need for additional services and medical specialties resulted in numerous expansions over the years.

Most said there's been dramatic change since he joined CDH in 1990.

“If you told someone 25 years ago that we were going to have 350 beds, that they would all be private rooms, that we were going to have brain and heart surgeries here, and that we would have 125 pediatric sub-specialists,” he said, “most people would have laughed at you.

“At one time, this was a sleepy little community hospital,” Most said. “Now it's been elevated to provide the same care as an academic hospital.”

For Messitt, who retired more than a year ago, it was enjoyable to see the transition and to be part if it.

“I was able to practice my specialty and had an abundance of patients,” he said. “And it was a good place to raise a family for me. So I loved every minute of it.”