BJC HealthCare plans a 12-bed hospice house in St. Louis City, marking the first facility of its kind built within city limits and giving dying patients and their families a home-like alternative to a hospital room. Construction is expected to begin in 2027. The new building, to be called Evelyn's House at Barnes-Jewish Hospital, will rise on the Washington University Medical Campus at the site of the former Barnes Lodge on Clayton Avenue near Interstate 64.
According to First Alert 4, Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Washington University are building the hospice house together, with officials saying it will expand specialized end-of-life care and bring comfort-focused services closer to home for more patients and families. The project is expected to be completed in 2028, the station reports. Becker's Hospital Review adds further detail, reporting that the facility will house 12 beds dedicated specifically to inpatient end-of-life care and will be the first dedicated hospice house located within St. Louis City limits.
The Clayton Avenue site puts the facility directly on the medical campus, according to BJC HealthCare. BJC's original hospice house is in Creve Coeur.
A Doubling of Demand Drives Expansion
Becker's Hospital Review reports that patient volume for inpatient hospice care across BJC's hospital system doubled over the five years leading into 2026, a trend the system cites as the reason for expanding its hospice footprint. BJC HealthCare operates as the largest hospice care provider in the St. Louis region, per the same outlet's reporting. Construction on the 12-bed facility is expected to begin in 2027, and the hospice house is expected to open for patient care in 2028, the Becker's report notes.
The new facility builds on a model BJC first introduced nearly a decade ago. The system's original hospice house, also called Evelyn's House, opened in June 2017 as a 16-bed, 18,000-square-foot facility on the Barnes-Jewish West County Hospital campus in Creve Coeur, costing $11 million to build and serving both adult and pediatric patients, according to BJC Hospice.
BJC's Hospice House Expansion
BJC's original Evelyn's House opened in 2017 in Creve Coeur. The new Clayton Avenue project will bring a hospice house to St. Louis City.
Both hospice houses honor the memory of Evelyn Newman, a St. Louis philanthropist who died in 2015 at age 95 after founding civic institutions including Forest Park Forever, the Butterfly House, and the Greater St. Louis Book Fair, according to the St. Louis Jewish Light. The Newman family's foundation provided a $5 million lead matching gift toward construction of BJC's original hospice home, the paper reported at the time.
Philanthropy Funds the New Build
The St. Louis City project is similarly being supported by private philanthropic funding raised through The Foundation for Barnes-Jewish Hospital, led by donations from local families including Peggy and Andy Newman, Aja and Pat Stokes, and Barbara and Andy Taylor, BJC HealthCare says. Medical leadership for the facility falls under Dr. Patrick White, who serves as chief medical officer for BJC Home Care and director of the Division of Palliative Medicine at Washington University School of Medicine, according to BJC. Washington University created Missouri's first comprehensive hospital-based palliative care program at Barnes-Jewish Hospital back in 2005, the health system notes.
BJC HealthCare is a regional non-profit academic healthcare system encompassing 14 hospitals, more than 30,000 employees, and $6.3 billion in net annual revenue across Missouri and Illinois. BJC is the largest hospice care provider in the St. Louis region. With construction set to begin in 2027 and the doors expected to open in 2028, the 12 new beds on Clayton Avenue represent the next step in an effort that began with a single suburban hospice house less than a decade ago.
