Mercy Health

The chief community health officer at SSM Health hopes that a joint effort of local hospital systems will result in improved health outcomes in St. Louis.

The Chesterfield-based Catholic health system submitted a letter of intent to build the $650 million facility to the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services, which regulates the construction of new hospitals. The proposed 75-bed hospital would be where Interstates 64 and 70 meet in Wentzville.

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.

The Department of Mental Health has continued to grapple with steep vacancies among staff, causing access to care across its state-run mental health facilities to decline as wings are shut down.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, virtual care was seen as a fringe movement that wouldn't work as well as in-person visits. All that has changed in the past year.

Hospitals struggled with a shortage of health care workers before the coronavirus pandemic, but they’re really stretched thin as they admit hundreds of patients with the virus every day. To fill gaps in the workforce, hospitals in the St. Louis region are relying more on temporary workers.

Mercy Health will soon begin construction on a clinic in Ferguson that will provide medical and mental health care to residents in north St. Louis County. The 5,500-square-foot health center will anchor a planned Florissant Avenue development that includes a grocery store and youth center.

The Rev. Allison Wible, a hospital chaplain for Mercy Hospital St. Louis, reflects on the quiet, unseen moments she’s been witness to over the past year as she works with COVID-19 patients and their families.

Mercy Health employees were among the first in the region to receive the newly approved coronavirus vaccine after the first shipments of the shots arrived in Missouri early Monday. The federal government is shipping 51,000 initial doses of the vaccine to the state’s health care workers this week, and millions more are expected to come in the next two months.

In spring, the region's largest hospital systems put a moratorium on elective procedures and surgeries. But another freeze could prove financially devastating for hospitals overwhelmed with coronavirus patients and short-staffed.