Memorial today: the flagship, its beds, and its tower

615 North Michigan Street — the state record of 2025 and the tower rising

The flagship in the present record: Memorial Hospital of South Bend stands at 615 North Michigan Street, the city's surviving founding hospital on the campus Epworth built. The state record fixes its present licensed size: the Indiana Department of Health's Hospital Consumer Report for the hospital (created 24 July 2025, posted 6 August 2025) gives license 24-005053-1 and 421 set-up and available total beds under the hospital license — a figure that covers the license's off-site services as well, the Epworth Center among them. The published figures around it conflict, and they are printed as published, the state record governing: 526 staffed beds in the reference line carried from the American Hospital Directory's figures of about 2010 — the same 526 the heritage account reaches, undated, at the end of Epworth's community drives; "the 423-bed Memorial Hospital" in Michiana Business News of April 2026; a 647-bed figure in a Southwestern Michigan College news item of June 2026, the widest outlier in the set; and the Department of Health's own earlier service reports, which counted total acute set-up beds at 460 in 2018 — sixty-four psychiatric and twenty rehabilitation beds among them — and 442 in 2021.

No average of these numbers exists in any source, and none is made here. The hospital's standing services, at the size this section gives them: Memorial is a designated Level II Trauma Center — Beacon's own statement, in the tower announcement of 2022, calls it the only Level II trauma center within ninety miles; its air service, Memorial MedFlight, took delivery of a new Eurocopter EC145 in 2013 and passed to Metro Aviation's operation on 1 June of that year, in the rebranding that accompanied the children's hospital; the area's first robotic da Vinci surgery program began at Memorial in 2007, on Beacon's locations record — the last two at pointer size, their clinical record belonging to the advancements leg. The hospital also teaches: the Memorial Family Medicine Residency, a long-established program the directories of 2026 describe as an unopposed community program of ten residents a year in each of three years.

The men and women in office are named only in office, as the public record names them: Larry Tracy stands as Memorial's president in the system's releases of 2022–2025 and as the administrator named in the state's 2025 report; Sarah Paturalski served as interim president of Memorial before being named president of Beacon Dowagiac in April 2026, when the business press named Kreg Gruber as Beacon's chief executive.

The tower: The campus is being rebuilt around its patients. Beacon's master facility plan process began in June 2019; the project was announced in the spring of 2022 at $232 million — a ten-story patient bed tower of 300,000 square feet and seven patient-care floors, with an intensive-care renovation and expansion, raising adult acute care beds from 249 to 302 and promising some five hundred new jobs, CannonDesign the architect and Walsh Construction the builder. Ground was broken on 18 October 2022; the first concrete pour was marked by a Miraculous Medal ceremony in November 2023; and the tower was topped out on 10 October 2025. The cost as later reported stands higher than the announcement — $257 million in the South Bend Tribune's 2025 year-in-review, $257.7 million in Michiana Business News of April 2026 — both printed against the announced $232 million. The city's frame for the work, from the Redevelopment Commission's minutes of 28 March 2024, names it the Madison Lifestyle District and Memorial Patient Tower: more than $330 million of private investment leveraged by $24 million from the commission and $11.7 million from the state. As this record is written the tower is in phased first occupancy, not fully open: Beacon's own news of 31 August 2026 reports the new twenty-six-bed adult intensive care unit moving into the tower in late October 2026, from its temporary home on the third floor of the Memorial Leighton Heart and Vascular Center, with the remaining tower floors targeted to open in the spring of 2027.

Sources:

1. Indiana Department of Health, Hospital Consumer Report for Memorial Hospital of South Bend (created 24 July 2025; posted 6 August 2025) — license 24-005053-1, 421 set-up and available total beds under the license, the off-site services covered, and Larry Tracy named as administrator.
2. Indiana Department of Health, Hospital Service Reports (2018, 2021) — total acute set-up beds of 460 and 442, the 2018 figure including 64 psychiatric and 20 rehabilitation beds.
3. Published bed figures as their sources give them — 526 staffed beds (American Hospital Directory line, c. 2010, as carried in reference works); 423 beds (Michiana Business News, April 2026); 647 beds (Southwestern Michigan College news, June 2026); 325 beds at the merger (Modern Healthcare, December 2011) — printed as a conflict, the state record governing.
4. Beacon Health System releases, 2022 — the tower announcement ($232 million, ten stories, 300,000 square feet, 249 to 302 adult acute care beds, CannonDesign and Walsh Construction, the master plan from June 2019), the 18 October 2022 groundbreaking, and the Level II Trauma Center statement as the system's own.
5. Beacon Health System news, 31 August 2026 — the twenty-six-bed adult ICU's move into the tower in late October 2026 and the remaining floors targeted for spring 2027; South Bend Tribune 2025 year-in-review and Michiana Business News, April 2026 — the cost as later reported, $257 million and $257.7 million.
6. South Bend Redevelopment Commission minutes, 28 March 2024 — the Madison Lifestyle District and Memorial Patient Tower frame, $24 million commission and $11.7 million state against more than $330 million private.
7. HeliHub, 3 June 2013 — Memorial MedFlight's EC145 delivery and the Metro Aviation conversion of 1 June 2013; Beacon Health System locations record — the da Vinci program's 2007 beginning at Memorial; family medicine residency program directories, 2026 — the unopposed 10-10-10 structure.
8. Michiana Business News, 9 April 2026 — Sarah Paturalski's interim presidency of Memorial and appointment at Beacon Dowagiac, and Kreg Gruber named as Beacon's chief executive; both named in office only.