Good morning, troops. It's Friday, Feb. 2.
It is Groundhog Day, of course, when the most famous groundhog of all, Punxsutawney Phil, scampers out of his hole in Pennsylvania to let us know how many more weeks of winter we should expect. Click here to find out what Phil saw this morning. Hint: You might not want to.
(The Peoria version of Phil, known as Gertie and stationed at Wildlife Prairie Park, came to the same conclusion regarding winter. One groundhog is an outlier, but two might be a trend.)
With this day comes multiple references to its namesake motion picture, where Bill Murray and crew live the same day over and over. But a number of OSF HealthCare employees probably are glad they had to live Feb. 1 only once.
They were up and working early Thursday to help the Peoria-based health-care organization welcome into the fold its two newest hospitals. The facilities in Danville and Urbana aren't really new, but OSF announced their acquisitions last August and had been dotting I's and crossing T's since then.
Information-technology systems and devices at both hospitals were transferred to OSF's system during the wee small hours Thursday, starting at midnight. The changeover had to be completed, for the most part, in time for the start of business later in the day.
With those changes came another, more public one — new names for the new OSF facilities.
What once was Presence Covenant Medical Center in Urbana now is OSF HealthCare Heart of Mary Medical Center. The former Presence United Samaritans Medical Center in Danville was renamed OSF HealthCare Sacred Heart Medical Center.
Changing a computer is one thing, but changing the public face of a business is another. Nick in the Morning wondered how OSF came up with the new names.
So we asked. OSF answered.
The names honor the respective Catholic religious congregations responsible for the hospitals' founding, according to OSF spokeswoman Shelli Dankoff. The Servants of the Holy Heart of Mary founded the Urbana hospital, and the Franciscan Sisters of the Sacred Heart founded the Danville hospital.
The OSF governing board selects several possible names, according to Sister Agnes Joseph Williams. The five board members belong to The Sisters of the Third Order of St. Francis.
The names are religious in nature, including titles for Jesus Christ and Mary and names of saints, particularly Franciscan ones, Sister Agnes Joseph told Nick in the Morning. In the Danville and Urbana cases, the board asked local religious communities to select the name they preferred.
A similar process took place in recent years when OSF took over non-religious-affiliated hospitals in Kewanee, Mendota and Ottawa, according to Sister Agnes Joseph. The sisters presented proposed names and rationale to each hospital's board of directors, which then picked one.
That's how Kewanee Hospital became Saint Luke Medical Center; how Mendota Community Hospital became Saint Paul Medical Center; and how Ottawa Regional Hospital & Healthcare Center became Saint Elizabeth Medical Center.
The new additions bring the number of OSF hospitals to 13. Here's hoping that number isn't unlucky for an organization that soon intends to establish a new headquarters in Downtown Peoria.
As far as songs heard on the way to work, this wasn't one of them. But on Groundhog Day, and in light of "Groundhog Day," it only makes sense. Just ask Bill Murray, former golf partner of Pekin native D.A. Points.