Hospital San Lucas

Hospital Episcopal San Lucas
Grupo Episcopal San Lucas
Hospital San Lucas
Geography
Location	Ponce, Puerto Rico
Organisation
Funding	For-profit hospital
Hospital type	General
Services
Beds	287
History
Founded	1907
Links
Website	http://www.ssepr.com/

Hospital Episcopal San Lucas, commonly known as Hospital San Lucas, is a hospital in Ponce, Puerto Rico

Hospital San Lucas was founded in 1907 by the Puerto Rico Episcopal Church. It was located on a hill in barrio Segundo in the Clausells sector of Ponce, on the north side of Calle Guadalupe, near Calle Petardos. In the first half of the 2000's government of Puerto Rico privatised all of its hospitals, and Grupo Episcopal San Lucas, needing to enlarge the facilities of its hospital, bought the government's Hospital de Distrito de Ponce (Ponce's District Hospital). Hospital de Distrito was located in barrio Machuelo Arriba, on Avenida Tito Castro (PR-14). Hospital San Lucas moved some of its departments there at that time. The hospital on Calle Guadalupe was renamed Hospital San Lucas I, and the hospital on PR-14 was named Hospital San Lucas II. In the mid-2000s, Grupo Episcopal San Lucas enlarged the facilities on Avenida Tito Castro and by the end of the decade it centralised everything on Avenida Tito Castro, vacating entirely the old structure on Calle Guadalupe. Grupo Episcopal San Lucas also owns Hospital Cristo Redentor in Guayama.

Starting in the late 1920s Puerto Rico experienced the development and building of public general hospitals intended to serve the health and medical needs of multiple neighbouring municipalities. The first such "Hospital de Distrito" (District Hospital) was inaugurated on 5 October 1929, in the Clausells neighbourhood of barrio Segundo in Ponce to serve the health and medical needs of Ponce and 37 of its surrounding municipalities. It was located on Calle Victoria at the T junction with Calle Distrito (so named because of the new hospital). Hospital de Distrito de Ponce's first medical director was Dr. Osvaldo Goyco who shared his time with Dr. Rafael Lopez Nussa. The hospital's first patient was Otilia Echevarria, a woman from Peñuelas, who was admitted to the hospital on 23 October 1929. In 1955, Hospital de Distrito moved to a new and larger campus located on the north side of Puerto Rico Highway 14 (aka, Carretera Central, and today -2015- Avenida Tito Castro) in barrio Machuelo Abajo. Hospital de Distrito operated at Avenida Tito Castro until the early 2000s, when the property was purchased by Grupo Hospital San Lucas. Most of the grounds and buildings of Hospital Distrito came to be occupied by Hospital San Lucas after the privatisation of public hospitals that took place in Puerto Rico in the 2000s. One of the outlying buildings of Hospital de Distrito, however, became Hospital Oncologico Andres Grillasca. Another one of outlying buildings of the former hospital now -2015- serves as juvenile detention center.