St. Francis Regional Medical Center has a rich tradition of providing quality healthcare for the people living in Minnesota’s Scott, Carver and western Dakota counties. Emerging in the middle of the Great Depression, when the nearest hospital was 30 miles away in Minneapolis, Shakopee was once an isolated rural city with a population of 2,400.
To serve the community, a group of Franciscan Sisters sought to open a hospital in Shakopee and, with community support, they purchased the Scott County poorhouse and soon founded St. Francis Hospital and Home in 1938. St. Francis served 128 patients from the surrounding area in its first year.
By the late 1940s, the original hospital could no longer support the expanding healthcare needs of the post-World War II baby boom. In 1950, a fund drive to build a new hospital was organized to raise $150,000 from the community. In May of 1953, a new 50-bed hospital replaced the former poorhouse to accommodate the area’s population growth. That first year, St. Francis provided care for more than 1,300 patients from surrounding communities.
In 1982, St. Francis Hospital was renamed St. Francis Regional Medical Center and, in 1987, the Franciscans transferred sponsorship and ownership of the hospital to the Benedictine Sisters at St. Scholastica Monastery in Duluth and the Benedictine Health System. By October 1993, a new alliance was formed between St. Francis, the Benedictine Health System and HealthSpan (a predecessor organization of Allina Health.) Growing healthcare needs and exceptional community support enabled the new St. Francis to build and open its current facility in July 1996.
In 2001, Park Nicollet Health Services (now part of HealthPartners) joined the ownership alliance, creating the unique tri-owner structure we have today. Many large-scale additions and renovations have been completed on the current campus since 1996.
The St. Francis service area has experienced rapid population growth, and the hospital has grown alongside it with 93 licensed acute care beds available to our community. In 2019, the hospital saw 6,125 inpatient admits, 130,785 outpatient encounters, 32,505 emergency department visits and 1,069 newborns delivered.
St. Francis is currently jointly-owned by Allina Health, HealthPartners Park Nicollet and Essentia Health. Its Catholic identity is sponsored by the Benedictine Sisters of St. Scholastica Monastery in Duluth. This unique structure combines the caring and compassion of a community hospital with the modern medical technology, specialties and services found in large metropolitan areas. St. Francis provides a full range of inpatient, outpatient and emergency care services on a collaborative medical campus with more than 30 other clinics and more than 400 providers.