Over the past year, the Department of Emergency Medicine marked a major milestone in its clinical mission by expanding its reach across the St. Louis community. While Barnes-Jewish Hospital has long served as our foundational home base—later joined by Barnes-Jewish West County Hospital over a decade ago and Missouri Baptist Hospital several years back—July 2025 signaled a transformative leap forward. The department officially took over clinical operations for four additional BJC facilities: Progress West Hospital, Barnes-Jewish St. Peters Hospital, Christian Hospital North East Emergency Department, and Christian Hospital North West Emergency Department.
Bringing high-caliber emergency care to a larger patient population comes with natural growing pains, but this expansion has proven to be a resounding success. Across our now seven clinical sites, our department treats over 250,000 patients annually. Beyond sheer volume, our team has elevated quality improvement and patient safety standards across the new locations. We have enriched site education through community faculty development—including hands-on, in-situ simulation—and achieved remarkable operational gains, significantly slashing left-without-being-seen (LWBS) rates and reducing door-to-physician times.
To support this growth, WashU Emergency Medicine became the first department at the School of Medicine to offer two distinct physician career tracks: our traditional academic faculty contract with its robust benefits, and a highly competitive community contract for our newly established WashU Clinical Specialists (WUCS). This innovative structure has strengthened our ties with departmental alumni, leading five graduating residents from last year’s class to join our community sites. As our teams settle into these new environments, we look forward to deepening our community impact while continuing to advance our core missions of clinical, educational, and research excellence.