St. Luke's Hospital

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.

Dr. Delene Musielak, a pediatrician at St. Luke's Hospital, said more children are testing positive for the coronavirus and parents should take precautions to protect them.

As coronavirus cases rise and more contagious variants take hold in Missouri, the four largest hospital systems in St. Louis are requiring all their workers to receive the COVID-19 vaccine by fall. Employees at St. Luke’s, SSM Health, BJC HealthCare and Mercy Health will need to be vaccinated by late September. Hospital officials say unvaccinated health workers are more at risk of catching the virus and more likely to spread it to patients.

Hundreds of volunteers are vital to pulling off a public health effort almost unprecedented in scale: vaccinating the state’s 6 million residents against a virus that has killed more than 9,000 Missourians and brought life to a momentary halt.

At St. Luke's Hospital in Chesterfield, patient techs, nurses and therapists are working twice their normal hours and trying to avoid burnout during a pandemic with no end in sight. Hospital leaders say that they soon won’t have enough staff to care for patients, and health workers have been pushed to their emotional and physical brink.

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.

When her illness first began, Celeste Marx didn’t think much of it.She felt more tired than usual and, at times, surprisingly weak. Then she started coughing — and whenever she coughed, she felt like she was going to throw up.“I just thought, ‘Oh my gosh, what is happening to me?’” said Marx, who lives in south St. Louis County. “I just felt so incredibly lousy.”

Hospitals in St. Louis are again allowing people to visit patients after months of restrictions aimed at controlling the spread of the coronavirus.SSM…

On nurse Jordan McNab’s first day at Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis in 2017, a patient stopped breathing. She had to immediately start giving him…

Chesterfield-based St. Luke's Hospital is buying Des Peres Hospital from Dallas-based Tenet Healthcare Corp. for an undisclosed price.The deal includes…