Samaritan Health System
Samaritan Health System was a hospital network in Arizona from 1911 to 1999, when it merged with Lutheran Health Systems to form Banner Health. It began in Phoenix in 1911 as Arizona Deaconess Hospital, started by Miss Lulu Clifton, a Methodist Deaconess who recovered from tuberculosis in the dry Arizona climate. The hospital was renamed Good Samaritan Hospital in 1928 and served people with respiratory diseases while helping a growing community. A nursing school operated there from 1924 to 1973.
Good Samaritan grew to 720 beds and became a non-profit teaching hospital and the state’s largest tertiary center with level one trauma care. In the 1950s and 60s, Phoenix’s rapid growth pushed for more expansion. In the 1960s, Good Samaritan’s board took over hospitals in Mesa/Tempe and Maryvale/Glendale, creating a four-hospital system: Good Samaritan, Desert Samaritan, Maryvale Samaritan, and Glendale/Thunderbird Samaritan. This formed one of the first not-for-profit multi-hospital systems, with centralized overhead to save costs. The system was first called Samaritan Health Service, then Samaritan Health System. Stephen Morris, a former Good Samaritan administrator, became CEO, guiding growth with a board of Phoenix executives.
By the 1970s, Phoenix was the nation’s ninth-largest metropolitan area. Samaritan expanded its reach to other regional hospitals and clinics, including Lake Havasu, San Clemente, White Mountains, Page, Grand Canyon, and Williams. The 1980s brought major capital upgrades to the four valley hospitals and new expansion to meet community needs. Two community health plans were added: Samaritan Health Plan and Arizona Physicians IPA, plus nursing homes, behavioral health facilities, air ambulance, and other outpatient services. The board considered selling Samaritan to a for-profit company but rejected it.
The 1990s brought reorganization and partnerships to strengthen the organization. In 1999, Samaritan Health System merged with Lutheran Health Systems to form Banner Health, a large non-profit health care system operating in multiple states.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 01:51 (CET).