Inquirer Editorial: Applaud visiting nurses on quasquicentennial

With so many renowned hospitals, there's no question that the region's vital health-care economy is anchored in its bricks-and-mortar buildings.

But several hundred boosters who will gather Saturday at the Union League of Philadelphia will be honoring a record of 125 years of caring for patients by an organization that could be considered the Delaware Valley's largest hospital without walls.

As the nation's second-oldest (behind Boston) in-home nursing group, the Visiting Nurse Association of Greater Philadelphia started with funding from a dozen women public-health pioneers. The nurses they hired provided care and education about hygiene and disease prevention in the homes of the city's 19th-century working-class and poor residents.

Their colleagues over successive decades helped the city cope with tuberculosis and influenza outbreaks, reduced infant mortality, and in recent years established hospice services.

The VNA organization has grown to 350 employees serving some 9,700 patients annually, many of them from the minority communities living in Philadelphia's poorest neighborhoods.

Among the 100 home-health agencies serving the region, the VNA also happens to be celebrating its milestone at a time when the value of keeping the chronically ill - especially the elderly - in their homes, thus reducing hospital admissions, is more important than ever as the nation tries to both meet, and afford, its growing health-care needs.