SLU Hospital leasing OCH space to open transplant clinic

Photo courtesy Ozarks Community Hospital

SSM Health Saint Louis University Hospital physicians will see patients in Springfield once a month at Ozarks Community Hospital’s Evergreen Clinic.

Kidney and liver disease patients of SSM Health Saint Louis University Hospital will have a shorter route to clinic care with a new Springfield offering.

The teaching hospital is scheduled to launch clinic services Friday morning via leased office space at Ozarks Community Hospital’s Evergreen Clinic, 1540 E. Evergreen Road.

St. Louis-based physicians and transplant coordinators will be seeing patients on a monthly basis, pre- and post-transplant, with transplant surgeries still being performed at SLU Hospital in St. Louis.

“For those folks down in that region, they would not have to drive all the way to St. Louis for the doctor appointments they would have leading up to a potential transplant,” SLU Hospital spokesman Jason Merrill said.

Merrill said SLU Hospital is not partnering with OCH, only leasing office space for the clinic.

SLU Hospital Transplant Program Manager Sherry Tenge said physicians plan to be on-site at the Evergreen Clinic once per month.

Tenge said the clinic will serve potential transplant patients, patients listed for transplants and those who already received transplants.

“Our goal is to ease the stress of so many trips to St. Louis,” she said. “I always try to be clear with patients that we can’t prevent them from traveling to St. Louis at all, but it definitely will help ease the stress of having to come up here so often.”