Grace Cottage Hospital

All these efforts paid off, and Grace Cottage Hospital opened on August 7, 1949. The work of the hospital began that night when Dr. Otis delivered its first baby. Within a year, Hattie Stratton’s house next door was added as specified in her will. In 1978 Ruth Heins gave her house up the street from the hospital. Dr. Otis served as hospital administrator until 1990 and as chairman of the board until he died in 1994. In 1992 the Wolff Outpatient building was opened; the hospital opened the Messenger Valley Pharmacy across the street in 1996; and in 1998 Grace Cottage Hospital moved up the hillside into a brand new building behind the original house where Grace Cottage Family Health is now located.

Grace Cottage Family Health is a federally certified Rural Health Clinic. Its 14 practitioners provide family practice, internal medicine, pediatrics, mental health and chiropractic care to approximately 7,000 individual patients annually. The Messenger Valley Pharmacy fills over 57,000 prescriptions a year, is a full-service pharmacy open to the public, and accepts all physicians’ prescriptions (including veterinarians’) and most health insurance programs, including Medicare and Medicaid. The Heins Building houses hospital and community administrative offices, the 24-hour ambulance crew for Rescue Inc, and the front half of the building is now the bright, spacious Community Wellness Center.

The staff at Grace Cottage is committed to live up to the hospital’s mission of excellence in healthcare and well-being, and to keep its promise to the community of going beyond patient care.