Hospitals

St. Louis’ largest health system, BJC HealthCare, plans to merge with Kansas City’s second-largest, St. Luke’s Health System, uniting more than 28 hospitals on both sides of Missouri by the end of this year.

Cardinal Glennon and SSM Health announced plans to build a 14-story hospital on Grand Boulevard. The planned hospital will be built two blocks north of the hospital’s current 195-bed facility, which opened in 1956.

HSHS hospitals, including O'Fallon's St. Elizabeth's, are restoring power after a cyber attack caused outages for weeks. Such attacks are becoming more common as health systems rely more on interconnected servers, experts say.

The state will repay educational costs for health care workers who are willing to work in underserved areas. Another program will increase the number of medical residencies in Missouri.

Owners of South City Hospital in Dutchtown, previously known as St. Alexius, announced last week they were closing the 178-bed location.

A July report from the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform, a national policy group, found that 19 of Missouri’s 57 rural hospitals are at risk of shuttering because of “serious financial problems.”

SSM Health is shutting down its trauma center at DePaul Hospital in Bridgeton, the last state-designated trauma center in north St. Louis County. SSM Health officials say it's because so few patients who come to the hospital ER need trauma services, but advocates and EMS workers say the decision could put patients with life-threatening injuries at risk.

Two of the largest health systems in Missouri earlier this year announced plans for a $10 billion merger. Experts said that won't necessarily benefit patients when it comes to prices and quality of care.

The Missouri Hospital Association's annual report shows vacancies and turnover rates at the state's hospitals have decreased since the height of the coronavirus pandemic in 2021. But they remain high, and employers are concerned about the future workforce.

Three years into the COVID pandemic, some St. Louis-area hospitals have decided to drop mask requirements, citing decreased infection levels.