General Content
Hospital Administrator, planner, and father of National Hospital Day, Christopher Gregg Parnall, M.D., was born in Rockland, Michigan, July 2, 1880. He received his M.D. in 1904 from the University of Michigan Medical School. Dr. Parnall entered private practice in Obstetrics and Gynecology in Jackson, Michigan from 1905 to 1915.
From 1915 to 1918 he was Director of Public Health and hospitals in Jackson. At the University of Michigan School of Medicine he held positions of Professor of Administrative Medicine and Director of the University Hospital from 1918 to 1924. During this time he designed the University of Michigan Hospital.
In 1924 he became Medical Director and Superintendent of Rochester General Hospital, a position he held until 1945.
During this time he served on the Rockefeller Commission for the study of nursing education from 1920 to 1923 and the advisory council on medical education from 1939 to 1943. He was President of the American Hospital Association in 1929. While President of the AHA he proposed to President Hoover the idea of National Hospital Day. Upon retirement he continued consulting and was instrumental in the design of hospitals in Texas, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Iowa. Dr. Parnall died in a Detroit hospital at the age of eighty in November 1960.