[2] In 1851, the first Roman Catholic Bishop of Cleveland, Louis Amadeus Rappe, brought from his native France a small group of members of a monastery of Augustinian canonesses regular dedicated to nursing to care for the sick of his diocese.

When the senior canonesses returned to France the following month, Rappe established the two young women from the group who had chosen to remain as the new religious congregation of Sisters of Charity of St. Augustine, under the leadership of an American woman, Mother Ursula Bissonette.

The outbreak of the American Civil War presented the additional dilemma of treating returning soldiers who had been wounded in battle, needing immediate medical attention and long term nursing care.

[1] A nursing school was opened to help staff the hospital's work in 1898, and two of the Sisters of Charity became among the first women in Ohio to be certified by the State Board of Pharmacy.

[5] With seismic shifts in healthcare and the COVID-19 pandemic, a challenging environment arose that would no longer allow the system to offer traditional acute care hospital service.