1Q: What is SSM St. Clare Health Center?
A: SSM St. Clare Health Center is an innovative health care campus, currently under construction in southwest St. Louis County at the intersection of Highway 141 and Bowles Avenue. The 54-acre campus will include a full-service hospital that will replace the current SSM St. Joseph Hospital of Kirkwood.

2Q: What’s special about this health center?
A: St. Clare will provide a unique healing environment – inside and out. The design of the 54-acre campus will take full advantage of the site’s natural beauty and soothing qualities, including rolling hills, water features, lush landscape and wooded areas. Simply put, it will make being in a hospital feel less like being in a hospital.

3Q: Why is SSM Health Care building a new hospital?
A: SSM St. Clare Health Center will allow SSM Health Care to maintain its health care ministry serving the Kirkwood area, while also meeting the needs of a rapidly expanding population in southwest St. Louis County in need of greater access to care, closer to home.

4Q: How is this project different from other new hospitals?
A: SSM St. Clare Health Center will provide something entirely new in the delivery of health care in our region. It will be the hospital of the future, with the latest in information and clinical technology, along with a forward-thinking service delivery approach that will offer an unsurpassed level of patient care, convenience, comfort, and safety.

5Q: What will SSM St. Clare Health Center look like?
A: The site plan and design for the 154-bed SSM St. Clare Health Center were shared at the groundbreaking ceremony on June 8, 2006. The overall campus design is centered on convenience, accessibility and patient safety, while also keeping the needs of physicians, staff and visitors top-of-mind.

6Q: What happens between now and the time SSM St. Clare Health Center opens?
A: We will continue to provide the same level of exceptional care at the current St. Joseph Hospital of Kirkwood until SSM St. Clare Health Center opens in the spring of 2009.

7Q: What is the economic benefit of this project?
A: SSM Health Care will invest nearly $236 million in the construction of SSM St. Clare Health Center and its health care campus.

8Q: What is the timetable for completion?
A: Construction began in 2006, with an anticipated opening in Spring 2009.

9Q: Why did you change the name from SSM St. Joseph Hospital to SSM St. Clare Health Center?
A: When we announced our replacement hospital project in late 2004, we also unveiled a bold vision for our new facility: “We will fundamentally reinvent the health care experience from the ground up for patients, physicians and staff to achieve breakthrough results in satisfaction, patient safety, clinical outcomes and operating performance.” Since we intend to create a new health care reality, it is fitting that our replacement facility would have a new name as well, honoring and building upon St. Joseph Hospital’s proud heritage of service and mission.

Find out more about how the name SSM St. Clare Health Center appropriately represents SSM Health Care's vision to fundamentally reinvent the health care experience from the ground up.