Baumgartner named St. Francis president
Michael Baumgartner
ST. LOUIS, Mo. — SSM Health, the non-profit health care system serving as the corporate parent of St. Francis Hospital & Health Services in Maryville, has announced that former St. Francis President Michael Baumgartner is returning as the hospital’s chief executive.
Baumgartner is currently president of Baptist Health, a 410-bed rural teaching hospital in Madisonville, Kentucky. Prior to that he served as president of St. Francis Regional Medical Center, an 86-bed acute care hospital in Shakopee, Minnesota.
His first stint as the top administrator at St. Francis in Maryville lasted from 1997-2007. He is scheduled to succeed retiring President Gray Cox on March 16.
“We’re pleased Michael Baumgartner has decided to return home to St. Francis Hospital,” said Chris Howard, SSM Health’s president of hospital operations. “During his time here he was integral in the hospital earning the Missouri Quality Award and helped recruit talented physicians to Maryville. We look forward to working with him to continue to enhance the care provided in this community.”
Cox has led St. Francis since September 2007. He began his SSM Health career in 1989 at St. Anthony Hospital in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, where he was vice president of hospital services.
In the late 1990s he was named president and CEO of SSM-managed Mission Hill Memorial Hospital in Shawnee, Oklahoma, which merged with Shawnee Regional Hospital in 2001 to form Unity Health Center.
Cox served as senior vice president and COO at Unity Health until coming to Maryville.
Under Cox’s leadership, St. Francis received numerous accolades with regard to its focus on safety and quality. Among other distinctions, the hospital was named one of the Joint Commission’s Top Performers in Key Quality Measures and received Premier’s QUEST Award for High-Value Healthcare.
SSM Health is a Catholic, non-profit health system embracing 19 hospitals and 60 outpatient care sites in Illinois, Missouri, Oklahoma and Wisconsin. The corporation also operates a pharmacy benefit company, an insurance company, two nursing homes, home care and hospice services, a technology company and two Accountable Care Organizations.
Staffing across the four-state SSM Health system comprises more than 1,300 physicians and nearly 30,000 employees. The acquisition in 2013 of Dean Health System, a large multi-specialty physician group and health plan, increased the system’s total number of doctor visits to about 4 million annually.
