Decades ago, while Mary Wakefield was in high school and working as a nurse’s aide in a small hospital in rural North Dakota, she was dazzled by the personal, compassionate care given to every patient. In a new To the Point post celebrating the Commonwealth Fund’s centennial, Wakefield, a former official with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and professor at Georgetown University School of Nursing & Health Studies, notes that the Commonwealth Fund recognized the crucial role of hospitals as anchors in their communities as far back as the 1920s, when the young foundation launched a major effort to build rural hospitals.
