How Duke Regional Hospital grew to serve generations
Tony Kosturi still remembers holding his moments-old son, Andrew at Duke Regional Hospital in 2007 before carefully passing him to his wife, Laura. Both new parents were in tears.
Two years later at Duke Regional, he experienced the same joy staring into the blue eyes of his newborn daughter, Mira.
"Every time I go there, the memories come flooding back," said Kosturi, a Duke Health Technology Solutions Information Security Application Analyst who joined Duke in 2005.
"It's part of our lives."
For 50 years, Duke Regional Hospital has been part of countless lives across Durham and surrounding counties. Since opening in 1976 as Durham County General Hospital, it has welcomed generations of newborns, cared for families during their most difficult moments and grown alongside the community it serves.
"Whether it's the people who work at Duke Regional and who are such a part of the community, or the people we meet every day whose lives have been helped by Duke Regional, we have so many touchpoints," said Duke Regional Hospital Chief Medical Officer Brian Burrows. "It's amazing how many people have come through our doors and gotten help."
Two Hospitals Become One
At 5:10 a.m. on October 10, 1976, Durham County General Hospital's first day began when two people visited the emergency department with food poisoning.
Around 7 a.m., ambulances - including military vehicles from Fort Bragg - began transferring patients from the soon-to-close Watts Hospital. At 8:23 a.m., a woman who had arrived hours earlier had Durham County General Hospital's first baby, a 9-pound, 5-ounce boy.
"We had barely gotten the doors open and she appeared," Edward McCauley, former Administrative Director of the Durham County Hospital Corporation, which oversees the hospital, said in a 2006 interview. "It's little things like that that you remember."
Prior to 1976, three hospitals served Durham. Duke University Hospital, which opened in 1930, excelled in specialty care, teaching and research. Meanwhile, Watts Hospital, which served mostly white patients since 1895,and Lincoln Hospital, open since 1901 for Durham's Black residents, met most of the city's health care needs.
By the 1960s, Lincoln Hospital's and Watts Hospital's aging facilities needed replacement. In 1968, Durham voters approved a $20 million bond to build a single public hospital that would replace Lincoln and Watts and serve all of Durham.
"The vision … was that it was going to be the hospital for this community" McCauley said in 2006. "It was going to bring people together."
Construction on Durham County General Hospital began in 1972 on county-owned land off North Roxboro Street. Employees at Lincoln and Watts, most of whom would bring their experience to the new hospital, received construction updates with their paychecks.
On Sept. 6, 1976, those employees and their families were invited to the new hospital to enjoy chicken dinners, balloons and facility tours. When the new hospital opened weeks later, signaling Watts' closure and Lincoln's transition as an outpatient care center, they returned to begin caring for their neighbors.
In Durham County General Hospital's first year, its 1,371-person staff cared for 13,126 admitted patients, delivered 1,582 babies, handled 17,201 surgeries and 25,208 emergency department treatments.
In the hospital's first annual report, McCauley acknowledged hiccups, such as a complicated telephone system and a few construction delays. But by delivering quality care during a period of adjustment, a culture was taking root.
"Each of us must take pride in what are doing in our hospital," he wrote.
Through Change, A Constant Presence
As secretary of the Mother/Baby Unit in 1976, Brenda Bridges experienced Duke Regional Hospital's whirlwind beginnings.
Adjusting to bustling corridors and budding relationships with colleagues from Lincoln Hospital and Watts - where Bridges had worked since 1969 - was challenging, but she also found reasons for encouragement.
At Watts Hospital, Black employees had largely been concentrated in support roles. Over time, Bridges saw more Black colleagues move into patient-facing positions at the new hospital, where close-knit care teams increasingly reflected the diverse community they served.
"Everybody was capable," said Bridges, now a Health Unit Coordinator in Duke Regional Hospital's Labor & Delivery Unit. "In the beginning, someone might be skeptical because of your color, but they'd build up trust with you. Then, if they needed help, they wouldn't call anyone else."
Over the years , Bridges watched the hospital expand with the opening of the George Washington Watts Memorial Building in 1980 and the Behavioral Health Center and expanded emergency department in 2021 .
As the hospital began serving more patients from surrounding counties, it was renamed Durham Regional Hospital in 1990.
Despite becoming an essential resource for the region, the hospital couldn't avoid industry-wide financial pressures. In 1998, amid rising health care costs, a partnership with Duke University Health System preserved the hospital's service mission and connected it with the resources of Duke's world-class health system.
The agreement gave Duke a 20-year lease and included a $3.5 million annual payment, a three-year guarantee against layoffs and continued care for patients with low incomes or no insurance.
"All of us, in years to come will say this was the right thing to do," George Quick, former chairman of the Durham County Hospital Corporation told the Durham Herald-Sun in 1998.
Duke's lease expanded to a 40-year term in 2009 , and, in 2013, the hospital's name became Duke Regional Hospital.
Through it all, Bridges has welcomed patients, visitors and co-workers coworkers in the hospital's Labor & Delivery Unit.
She cherishes the memories of the many colleagues who became dear friends, and the opportunity she has to ease the minds of anxious expectant mothers. Her time-tested approach for greeting patients is to look them in the eye, smile and ask what they need to feel at home.
She reassures them that, surrounded by her experienced, committed colleagues, they are in the right place.
"I love doing my job," Bridges said. "I feel like this is where I was meant to be."
