About Us

Jewish Hospital & St. Mary’s HealthCare (JHSMH) was created when two of the region’s most well-established health systems – Jewish Hospital HealthCare Services and CARITAS Health Services – joined together in 2005. The merged company is a major regional health nework that includes 71 health care facilities with more than 1,900 licensed beds, over 42,000 discharges and almost 100,000 emergency room visits annually. JHSMH employs more than 8,100 people, who are dedicated to providing quality care to the residents of Louisville, Ky., and the surrounding areas. JHSMH provides a complete array of health care services in Kentucky and southern Indiana including: hospitals, behavioral health, assisted living, home health care, outpatient care, nursing home care, occupational health and rehab medicine.

Jewish Hospital, a 442-bed regional referral center, celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2003 and is the flagship of JHSMH. The hospital is anchored by two other well-known names in Louisville health care – Sts. Mary & Elizabeth Hospital, a 331–licensed bed community hospital founded in 1874 by the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth and located in the Louisville’s South End, and Our Lady of Peace, founded in 1951 as one of the nation’s largest private, not-for-profit psychiatric hospitals with 416 licensed beds.

Among its many milestones, Jewish Hospital has received the Consumer Choice Award as the most preferred hospital in Louisville by the National Research Corporation, an independent health care data research company, more than any other hospital in Kentucky. Many of Jewish Hospital’s clinical programs, affiliated with the University of Louisville School of Medicine, have achieved national rankings for excellence, as well as numerous medical “firsts” in Kentucky, the region, nation and world.

Apremier heart hospital in the United States, Jewish Hospital is the site of the world’s first and second implants of the AbioCor® Implantable Replacement Heart. Jewish Hospital is also the only hospital in the country to perform both the totally implantable heart and the totally implantable Left Ventricular Assist System (the LionheartTM).

The Transplant Center - a program of Jewish Hospital and the University of Louisville School of Medicine – is in the elite percent- age of organ transplant centers in the nation and one of a handful of hospitals performing all five solid organ transplants. The center was the 12th hospital in the nation to receive Federal Medicare Designation for kidney, liver, lung and heart transplants.

The Jewish Hospital Outpatient Care Center expanded in 2001 to include a new state-of-the-art hand care center – the first in the U.S. The center is the site of the world’s first, second and third successful human hand transplants.

In 2003, the “next generation” of health care arrived in Louisville with Jewish Hospital Medical Center East. With a “high tech” and “patient focused” vision, the facility is designed with the most comprehensive technological enhancements available, distinguishing it from any other outpatient facility. Also in 2003, the organization began managing the Owensboro Medical Health System Heart Program to improve the care of patients throughout that community.

Another new facility opened in 2006 – Jewish Hospital Medical Center South in Bullitt County – an outpatient surgical, diagnostic and comprehensive primary care center with 24-hour emergency services, diagnostic imaging and magnetic resonance imaging services and ambulatory surgical services.

JHSMH continues its rise with a world–class rehab institute – an $88 million expansion of the Frazier Rehab and Neuroscience Center – which will take the facility from five floors to 15.

To improve care for patients with advanced heart disease, Jewish Hospital has partnered with U of L and Kentucky's Office of New Economy to open the Cardiovascular Innovation Institute.

The Institute will give patients access to the newest generation of bio–adaptive heart innovations that augment or replace failing hearts.

Sts. Mary & Elizabeth Hospital (1874) and Our Lady of Peace (1951) were founded by the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth and were a part of Catholic Health Initiatives, the nation’s second largest Catholic hospital system, since 1997. St. Mary’s is a general acute-care hospital that offers orthopaedics, cardio–pulmonary medicine, cancer care, interventional radiology and rehabilitation, among other services.

Our Lady of Peace offers 21 different psychiatric inpatient, outpatient and partial programs for children, adolescents and adults. In 2003, it received the Silver Award from the American Psychiatric Association as offering some of the most innovative children and adolescent treatment programs in the United States. Also in 2003, Catholic Health Initiatives awarded Our Lady of Peace a $300,000 grant to pilot psychiatric services programs in primary care physician offices - making it one of only two organizations in Kentucky to provide psychiatric counseling services in physician offices.

The Physician Group, continues to meet the growing medical needs of the community by providing quality physician groups to care for our patients TPG has currently more than 100 physicians.

VNANazareth Home Care, also a part of JHSMH, combines the strengths and services of the former Visiting Nurse Association (VNA) with CARITAS Home Health. Together along with Southern Home Care, the home care agency serves 41 counties in Kentucky and southern Indiana, and makes over 250,000 house calls per year.

As JHSMH builds on its combined 231 years of providing excellent health care to the communities it serves, the organization will continue to expand and seek new opportunities to provide innovative services — both now and in the future.

* Located in 14 Louisville locations, plus Taylor Regional Hospital, Jewish Hospital Shelbyville, Bullitt County and Meade County; in Indiana-Clark and Scott Counties

** Located at Jewish Hospital, Jewish Hospital Hand Care Center and Jewish Hospital Medical Center East

*** SIRH is a partnership of Frazier Rehab Institute, Clark Memorial Hospital and Floyd Memorial Hospital and Health Services

***** VNAHome Care (1996) merged with CARITAS Home Health (1971) to VNANazareth Home Care in 2005.

****** Managerial partnership between Heart and Lung Institute and London cardiologists

******* Managed by Kindred Healthcare, Inc. through lease agreement with JHSMH

******** Partnership between Jewish Hospital, UofL and Kentucky’s Office of the New Economy