ST. LOUIS — The St. Louis Agency on Training and Employment, better known as SLATE, hosted a job fair for former employees at South City Hospital.
This is just one week after South City Hospital, formerly known as St. Alexius, shut its doors following years of financial woes. The 154-year-old hospital faced bankruptcy twice and several lawsuits plagued its persistence to stay open.
The week it announced its closure, an internal email said the financial deficit and stability were deemed too much and obtaining other parties was not reasonably realistic to keep the 178-bed facility open.
"This was in reaction to South City Hospital closing and we went into action. The layoff was 563 people," Fredrecka McGlown, SLATE's executive director, said.
Within the first hour, 100 job seekers came out to the event on Friday and were embraced by 18 employers including BJC Healthcare.
"We are among our peers and competitors, but we're all trying to find ways to help and support people for open positions. We are hiring everything from security guards to patient access to nurses to doctors," Sean Peterson, director of Talent Strategies said.
Stacy Wiley, a nurse practitioner, said she was eager for employment. Wiley learned last Tuesday that she was laid off from South City Hospital and on Wednesday, she was informed about the hospital's closure.
"I did clinicals at the hospital when I was a nursing student and I loved the fact that people were so complex, they had multiple problems and that's where I wanted to focus," she said. "We specialized on drug abuse, mental health and other things as well but that was our core demographic."
Wiley said she is also concerned about the patients.
"A lot of people walked into the hospital and the closest hospital is St. Louis University Hospital (SLU) and they can't walk from there. Just the people in the community now, they don't have a hospital close to their home," she said.
SLU Hospital is about a 10-minute drive from South City Hospital, which would take more than an hour's walk.
After spending the last nine years nursing others, Wiley said she is now getting that help back at the job fair.
"There are a lot of great people that worked there and since everything was so abruptly ended, I think it was great to have an opportunity to have a job right away," she said.
If you could not make the job fair, then SLATE said there will be more in the future. To reach out to SLATE, click here.