St. Luke’s Hospital in Des Peres will close its doors permanently on Aug. 1, officials told employees on Monday.
The 143-bed hospital on Dougherty Ferry Road in St. Louis County didn’t have enough patients to justify keeping it open, spokeswoman Kelly Webb-Little said in an emailed statement.
“Despite the dedication and hard work of our team members, the hospital has faced persistently low utilization and increasing financial pressures, making continued operation as an acute care facility no longer viable,” she said.
St. Luke’s Hospital in Chesterfield, with nearly 500 beds, will remain open, as will the medical offices in Des Peres and the outpatient clinics operated by the health system throughout the region.
Officials from the health system did not say how many people would be laid off because of the decision but said they want to relocate as many people as possible to Chesterfield and other St. Luke’s facilities.
Des Peres City Administrator Scott Schaefer said city officials just learned of the closure Monday as the news became public.
The hospital had been a great neighbor, he said; it was involved in the local chamber of commerce and collaborated with the public safety department.
But the facility is around a half-century old.
“We did recognize that the hospital has been an operation under different operators since 1974,” he said. “The campus is probably at the end of its useful life.”
The economic impact on the region will likely be more pronounced than the effects on the availability of medical care, Schaefer said. Missouri Baptist Hospital and Mercy St. Louis are a short drive away, and St. Luke’s is less than 10 miles away.
“We value having sort of a boutique hospital within our jurisdiction. It's great. There's intangibles to it that I couldn't possibly capture in one conversation,” he said. “This will be a disruption for people that are accustomed to having a hospital so close by, but there are still very quality health care options within our region.”
St. Louis County-based St. Luke’s bought the Des Peres facility in 2018 from a company in Texas.
Unlike other hospitals in the St. Louis area, St. Luke’s has not become part of the large multistate health systems that dominate the region such as BJC, Mercy and SSM, stating on its website it is “proud to be the area's only independent healthcare provider.”
As St. Luke’s Hospital in Des Peres is closing, other health systems in the region are building new facilities or expanding.
Chesterfield-based Mercy this spring broke ground on a 75-bed hospital in Wentzville to serve the booming population in the region’s far-west suburbs.
At the same time, hospitals in St. Louis' urban core — including Homer G. Phillips Memorial Hospital and South City Hospital — have closed their doors in recent years.
