Barbara Ann Price, President of the Village Improvement Association (VIA) of Doylestown, described the humble beginnings of what has evolved into one of Bucks County’s premier healthcare providers: Doylestown Hospital.

The VIA and the hospital have been linked since its earliest days.

Even as far back as the late 1800s, the first VIA members knew that an organized, formal approach to medical care was inherent in their mission to “enhance the health and welfare of central Bucks County and surrounding communities.”

VIA’s founders, said Price, were “four women who were not happy with the [dusty] street conditions in Doylestown.”

After their request for governmental help in solving the problem were rebuffed, they took matters into their own hands.

“They hired a water truck that went through the town and sprayed water on the streets,” Price related. Less dust, they felt, would cut instances of asthma and other respiratory diseases.

From there, the motivated VIA women hired a visiting nurse to care for local patients. “In one month’s time, she saw 741 people,” Price reported.

Considering that success, the idea for a local hospital took root. The need was evident: The closest hospital at the time was in Abington.

Over the ensuing decades, funds were raised, sites were moved, and the hospital became the cornerstone of the community, a position it retains to this day.

The drive of those female founders continues to resonate in the operation of Doylestown Hospital.

To the best of Price’s knowledge, it remains “the only wholly-owned, women-owned hospital system in the country.”

Price and her colleagues are currently planning a large-scale celebration for the centennial anniversary of Doylestown Hospital’s founding. The health system reaches that milestone in 2023.