After only six years in operation, the emergency department at the Bon Secours St. Francis Medical Center was approaching capacity. Designed to serve 40,000 patients in Chesterfield County and the surrounding area, it started to have efficiency challenges as the Chesterfield population increased almost 22 percent from 2000 to 2010.

“If we want to continue to meet the health care needs of this community, we needed to expand our emergency services,” says Kevin Sheppard, vice Read full story

Margaret Daugherty’s room is quiet. The constant churning noise from the portable machine that powered her artificial heart, the machine to which she was tethered for 223 days, is gone. The artificial heart is gone, too, replaced by the heart of an unknown woman, a donor about whom Daugherty knows little, except that she was a perfect match.

Daugherty also senses that she was someone who liked Labradors and spending time at the ocean. “The only Read full story