The CHRISTUS Health Print Services team. (All images courtesy of CHRISTUS Health Print Services.)

“Every dollar that we save goes back into patient healthcare,” says Del Shankle, Director of Operations for CHRISTUS Health Print Services. Saving the parent company money is the goal of many an in-plant, but for CHRISTUS Health Print Services, it is part of the in-plant’s—and the hospital’s—mission: “To extend the healing ministry of Jesus Christ.”

Not many in-plants can trace their origins to the 19th century. What became Texas’ CHRISTUS Health started in 1846—literally the “Wild West.” It was in that year that French priest Claude Marie Dubuis was sent as a missionary to the Texas frontier settlements near Austin and San Antonio, witnessing along the way the hardscrabble conditions of those early settlers. In 1866, Dubuis, by then Bishop of Texas, was facing down a cholera epidemic. Unable to attract domestic medical help, he wrote to Mother Angelique Hiver, Superior of the Order of the Incarnate Word and Blessed Sacrament in Lyon, France, and asked for assistance. In his letter, Bishop Dubuis wrote, “Our Lord Jesus Christ, suffering in the persons of a multitude of sick and infirm of every kind, seeks relief at your hands.” Three volunteer nurses heeded his call and would become the first sisters of the new Congregation of the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word—which over the next 70 years would evolve into what we know today as CHRISTUS Health. (You can read more about the origins of CHRISTUS Health here.)