History of SSM Health Care
SSM Health Care traces its roots to 1872, when Mother Mary Odilia Berger and four other sisters came to St. Louis from Germany, after caring for sick and wounded soldiers during the Franco-Prussian War. Facing religious persecution in Germany, they came to the United States. When they arrived in St. Louis they began providing nursing care to people in their own homes. That winter, when a smallpox epidemic hit St. Louis, the sisters cared for the sick and dying. For a short time, people referred to them as the Smallpox Sisters. In 1874, the congregation received its formal name: the Sisters of St. Mary (SSM).
Most of the health care facilities that today belong to SSM Health Care were previously part of a group of hospitals owned by the Sisters of St. Mary and centrally governed, but not centrally managed. In the mid-1980s, the sponsoring congregation decided to reorganize its hospitals into a system of centrally managed health care providers, and SSM Health Care was created in 1986. Today the system is managed by a team of professionals—both lay and religious—and governed by members of the sponsoring congregation as well as by laypersons from the communities served by its facilities.
In 2012 SSM stated that it was 'disappointed with the contraceptive mandate' regarding being legally forced to cover such items by the Affordable Care Act, against Catholic freedom of conscience.
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