Archbishop Robert J. Carlson of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of St. Louis came to Crystal City on Thursday (Nov. 30) to bless portions of the new facilities under construction at Mercy Hospital Jefferson.
The archbishop blessed the new cancer center nearing completion on the north end of the hospital campus, then performed a second blessing in the spacious foyer of the new three-story, 90-bed patient tower under construction at the center of the hospital complex. The morning concluded with a service in the hospital’s new chapel.
The cancer center is on track to open by the end of 2017, with the lower floors of the patient tower to open soon thereafter. It’s all part of a $137 million expansion and upgrade of the hospital, which opened in 1957 as Jefferson Memorial Hospital and later became Jefferson Regional Medical Center. Mercy Health Systems purchased the hospital in January 2013 and broke ground on the new patient tower in June 2015.