The St. Joseph's Hospital campus in downtown St. Paul is being converted into a center for community wellness and health equity, though it will continue to provide inpatient mental health care at least through next summer.
Fairview Health Services on Tuesday announced the new plans for the state's oldest hospital, which had wound down general inpatient services over the past year and was used for several months as a stand-alone COVID-19 treatment center until that ceased in the spring.
A 2021 community survey found health care services to be inadequate, especially for lower-income and minority people in the St. Paul area, and Fairview leaders said the repurposing of St. Joseph's will fill those gaps in a new way.
Health disparities by race, income and ZIP code can't be addressed within hospitals alone but demand wellness and prevention services that keep people out of hospitals in the first place, said James Hereford, Fairview's chief executive. "Certainly it has been demonstrated that in St. Paul, within a little less than a mile and a half, you can almost see a decade difference in life expectancy. St. Paul and the East Metro I think are great proving grounds to say, 'How do we take this innovative approach and apply it?'"
Renovations will begin in January on the campus, and Minnesota Community Care, a federally qualified health center, will open a clinic there next summer that will provide low-cost or free primary care and health education.
Second Harvest Heartland will hold pop-up food shelves at the center to address local nutritional needs while Ebenezer Senior Living will provide day adult services to help seniors living at home maintain active lifestyles. The M Health Fairview medical system also will expand outpatient mental health and addiction services at the site.
"Reliable access to healthy, familiar foods is an essential building block to a healthy life. And we know that food insecurity is not an isolated experience," said Allison O'Toole, Second Harvest's chief executive, in a statement.
Fairview leaders in late 2019 had targeted the money-losing St. Joseph's for closure as a hospital along with the Bethesda long-term acute care hospital, also in St. Paul. Both were temporarily used to expand Minnesota's capacity for treating COVID-19 patients, but their shutdowns occurred largely on schedule — with Bethesda being converted into transitional housing for the homeless through a lease agreement with Ramsey County.
