Management

Past

Patient care has always been the central mission of the Pennsylvania Hospital. Modernizing the Hospital and maintaining its ability to provide state of the art medical care and education have been and continue to be a top priority. Similarly, the enduring appearance of the Pine Building and gardens and the curation and care of its archive and collections, are indicative of the Hospital’s awareness of its own historicity and heritage value. The modern Hospital garners its authority from this irreducible combination of mission and history that have evolved in tandem, one lending legitimacy and significance to the other. From a heritage management perspective, preserving the integrated mission and history of the Hospital is both an opportunity and a challenge. The crux of this balance is to showcase the Hospital as a public facing cultural site of medical, social, urban, educational, and technological history of enduring relevance while supporting its unwavering mission of modern patient care. This CMP seeks to lay out the current management and operations protocols, assess where the cultural/historical aspect of the site fits into the larger organization, and make recommendations for how to establish a more clearly defined relationship between the two facets of the site.

Present

Responsibility for the preservation and interpretation of the Hospital’s historic buildings, grounds, and collections is currently divided between employees working within the departments of Facilities and Library Services.

The Pine Building has remained an integral part of Hospital operations through its use as office and clinical space. Care and upkeep of the building and grounds are managed by Facilities and funded through various established budgets.

Care and management of the collections, interpretation of the historic spaces, and other programming is primarily handled by the Lead Archivist/Curator, who sits within Library Services, a department that is currently overseen by the Director of Nursing Education. Library Services consists of three employees: the Lead Archivist/Curator, an Intranet & Instructional Design Specialist, and a Clinical Librarian. All marketing and public affairs opportunities are managed through the University of Pennsylvania Health System.