Mercy careers

Mercy's story starts with an unexpected inheritance. Catherine McAuley, an Irish woman of modest upbringing, came into money that let her open the first House of Mercy in Dublin in 1827, teaching skills to women and educating children living in poverty. She went on to found the Sisters of Mercy, one of the first religious orders whose sisters were free to walk among the poor and visit them in their homes.

The Sisters reached the United States in 1843 and St. Louis in 1856, then built hospitals across the Midwest in the decades that followed. Many of those hospitals joined together in 1986 as Mercy, the health system that carries the name today. The modern footprint covers Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma, with physician practices, outpatient facilities, and urgent and acute care locations across the four states, plus clinics and outreach ministries in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. The system states its mission in a direct line back to its founders: as the Sisters of Mercy before us, bringing to life the healing ministry of Jesus through compassionate care and exceptional service. If you're weighing Mercy against other systems on this board, that lineage is useful context. This is Catholic healthcare with nearly two centuries of history behind it, organized as one system for only about forty of those years.