After more than a decade of steady growth, Baptist Memorial Hospital was one of Oklahoma City’s largest employers. The physical facility had changed over the years, and now it was time for a change of management structure. The most visible result of this reorganization was the hospital’s new name: Baptist Medical Center.

The hospital was renamed Baptist Medical Center (BMC) in 1972, reflecting the comprehensive nature of services provided. Other changes were afoot at the same time. Among them, Children’s World opened, the first on-site, corporate-sponsored daycare in Oklahoma City.

BMC leaders, having been through an in-depth strategic planning process, unveiled their vision for phase III expansion and a $1 million fundraising effort to support it. This phase would create an East Tower with six floors, a North Tower with three floors of specialty care units, a parking garage and more administrative services space. The new facilities were dedicated in May 1974, expanding the hospital to 563 beds.

The year 1975 was notable for the three new treatment centers that opened at BMC. The Speech Pathology Department, a Gastrointestinal Laboratory and the Baptist Burn Center offered new levels of specialized care.

Now known as the Paul Silverstein Burn Center, the original center was located on the third floor of the West Tower and had 11 beds. Dr. Silverstein, a plastic surgeon specializing in burn treatment, was the center’s first director and oversaw its expansion, adding beds, hyperbaric oxygen therapy and other advanced surgical techniques until his retirement in 2012.

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