Barnes-Jewish Inpatient Tower
BJC HealthCare opened a 16-story inpatient tower at Barnes-Jewish Hospital in September on the site of the former Queeny Tower. The updated tower features private rooms for heart and vascular patients, state-of-the-art imaging technology, and advanced surgical preparation and recovery areas.
A central feature of the redesign was flexibility. Patient rooms are now equipped to accommodate both intensive care and lower-acuity treatment, allowing care teams to bring expertise directly to patients and minimizing the need for transfers between rooms. The tower also includes dedicated spaces for family members to rest and recharge. Patient privacy is prioritized as well, with 280 private rooms.
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The facility’s evolution also extends to technology: The tower incorporates the latest MRI and imaging systems, and it has larger pre-op and recovery areas. Besides benefitting patients, these enhancements are also designed to foster greater collaboration among clinical staff.
“We learned from the pandemic the importance of mental health and the ability to take time for rest and rejuvenation and built that into our environment,” says Angelleen Peters-Lewis, president of Barnes-Jewish West County Hospital and vice president and chief operating officer of Barnes-Jewish Hospital. “We are committed to educating the next generation of not just physicians, but all health care providers.”
Mercy Wentzville
On April 24, Mercy broke ground on its new hospital campus in Wentzville. Spanning 425,000 square feet, the facility is designed with a focus on outpatient services, emphasizing accessible, community-based primary care. Mercy anticipates the campus will open in approximately four years.
“We know that the health care landscape is changing drastically,” says Marie Moore, president of Mercy Washington and Lincoln communities. “We want to continue to drive forward different models of care in that spirit of innovation and meeting patients where they are, closer to home.”
The health care campus will incorporate both hospital and ambulatory settings, offering a full spectrum of services, including inpatient emergency care and primary care; a range of specialty services, such as cardiology, oncology, and orthopedics; as well as advanced diagnostic and treatment capabilities.
Mercy plans to integrate advanced digital tools across platforms, which will enhance both care delivery and efficiency. Currently, various technologies are being tested to support features such as ambient listening, automated delivery of supplies and medications, and streamlined clinical documentation.
“All of those items will come together to make a better experience for the patient and the caregivers,” says David Argueta, Mercy senior vice president of community operations and acute and ambulatory care. “This expansion into Wentzville is just another step [toward] meeting communities where they are.”
SSM Health Cardinal Glennon
Since its founding in 1956, SSM Health Cardinal Glennon Children’s Hospital has witnessed the evolving complexity of pediatric care. In response, SSM Health is developing a new facility designed to meet the needs of modern care for today’s patients. The new hospital is set to be completed in August 2027 at the corner of Chouteau and Grand.
“If we’re going to really continue to transform pediatric care, we needed a new facility that allowed us to do that,” says Jeremy Fotheringham, St. Louis and Southern Illinois regional president at SSM Health.
The hospital’s interior and functional design have been directly shaped by staff members. Drawing on their experience, the focus is on enhancing the pediatric and overall patient experience. A cornerstone of the new facility is its neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), which will be the first in Missouri to have exterior windows in every room. “As families spend days to weeks in a NICU, we knew how important [it] was to families to know what’s happening outside and have some daylight,” Fotheringham says.
Patient experience is also a priority in how visitors and families navigate the hospital. Plans include a central corridor with color-coded floors to simplify wayfinding. In designing the system, the team considered Disney-inspired principles to create a more intuitive, engaging pediatric environment.
The hospital’s location is also key. The site is close to mass transit, and it’s easy to access from interstates. Fotheringham says the decision was also shaped by broader social awareness: “We wanted to be where we can provide the greatest service to those communities that are most disadvantaged and provide training and opportunities that normally wouldn’t exist.”
SSM Health Neuro Transitional Center
In February, SSM Health opened its Neuro Transitional Center (NTC) in O’Fallon, Missouri. Designed for patients who have completed hospital or rehabilitation stays but still require intensive therapy, the 12-bed, all-private-room facility is the first of its kind in the state—and one of only a few in the nation.
The center’s mission is to help patients return to normal activities after traumatic injuries, but it offers more than traditional rehabilitation. Although most rehab services focus on basic physical tasks such as navigating stairs, the NTC simulates real-life environments to help patients regain independence in daily living by replicating a typical home setting.
“It’s one thing to be able to go up and down stairs,” Fotheringham says. “It’s quite another to [work] with people with new or different abilities, to actually have a place where they can be trained to figure out, ‘How do I actually do all my laundry? How do I cook? How do I continue to advance my mind in a way that allows me to function, not only with my family but also my community?’”
Unlike conventional rehab programs, which generally emphasize the physicality of recovery, the NTC offers a new way to gauge recovery as it relates to mental acuity. “The [NTC] still focuses on the physical aspect of health and healing, but it starts to really focus on the mental abilities that allow you to function and all those things that we take for granted in a much more intensive way,” Fotheringham says.
Brave New World
In an era of evolving technology, WashU Medicine and BJC HealthCare have launched the Center for Health AI to provide more personalized, effective care for patients, as well as to improve efficiency for health care providers.
“There are a lot of AI-driven solutions that are going to make access to care easier and faster, whether that be scheduling your next appointment or getting a prescription refilled or asking your provider a question or maybe avoiding an unnecessary emergency room encounter,” says Philip Payne, associate dean for health information and data science at WashU Medicine and its chief data scientist.
Payne has seen a rapid evolution of AI in health care. He explains that beyond keeping pace with this advancement, a key motivator is improving the patient experience by making health care more accessible, affordable, and easier to navigate.
Another driving factor behind the center is addressing provider burnout, as well as the growing challenge of attracting and retaining health care professionals. These AI systems offer behavioral nudges, such as prompting providers to take breaks from documentation tasks, and they deliver real-time support at the point of care.
Another exciting application of AI is the ability to predict blood loss during surgery. Previously, estimates were based on statistical data, which didn’t account for individual patient characteristics, surgeon history, or other variables. This often resulted in the preparation of excess blood products, which led to waste. “We’re moving away from treating patients as an average and treating patients as unique individuals,” says Payne, “and using AI to assess all of that data that’s at our fingertips so we can make smarter decisions.”
Payne hopes that evolving technology can help create a more accessible health care system for all: “I hope we’ll see a shift toward a more affordable and accessible health care system, that we will remove a lot of the components of the system that are high cost and low value in terms of delivering care, and automate them in ways that helps drive down the cost of health care delivery and improves accessibility.”
