HYDE PARK — University of Chicago Medicine on Tuesday announced plans to build a $36 million emergency room.
According to a proposal submitted to the Illinois Health Facilities Review Board and first reported by Crain’s, the university claims the ER in Bernard Mitchell Hospital is overcrowded and needs to expand.
About 52,000 patients a year are treated at the ER at Mitchell, which is being converted to offices as the university moves most services over to the new Center for Care and Discovery.
The university proposes opening an ER in 2020 on the first floor of a parking garage under construction north of the Center for Care and Discovery.
The proposal, though, does not include plans to offer trauma center services in the new ER. The university has a trauma center at Comer Children's Hospital for patients younger than 17 who have life-threatening injuries from a car crash or gunshot wound.
After more than three years of protests by community groups calling for a trauma center, the university recently expanded trauma care at Comer, but not for adult patients.
Kenneth Polonsky, dean of the medical school, said last year the university was looking for more space for the ER and at the time was considering the first floor of the new parking garage.
In the proposal, the new ER would be attached to the Center for Care and Discovery by a tunnel and a skybridge.
In a letter to the Facilities Review Board, which regulates adding and removing hospital services in the state, medical center President Sharon O'Keefe said opening the hospital has slowed care for patients in the ER.
"The adult emergency department and the Center for Care and Discovery are separated by 1,500 feet and two elevator rides, which means long travel times for patients who need critical access to the operating rooms, invasive cardiology laboratories and the neurology intensive care unit," O'Keefe writes.
In August, the state board narrowly approved moving services from Mitchell to the new hospital, voting the measure down once because the new rooms were seen as unnecessarily large for a hospital before approving it on a second vote.
O'Keefe said in the letter that it now takes 15 minutes to get patients from the ER to surgery rooms. She says the new ER will reduce that time to less than five minutes.
The current ER is crowded, treating 191 patients a day at peak times and averaging 147 patients a day, she said. On average, more than 16 patients a day leave the ER before getting treatment. O'Keefe said she believes it's because of the long wait times.
Patients on average spend 6½ hours in the emergency room at the university, and those who are admitted to the hospital are discharged in less than 11 hours on average, according to the proposal.
The new ER will add six treatment stations, raising the total to 42. The proposal says the university is hoping to get to the industry benchmark that patients spend 4½ hours in the ER on average, and those admitted to the hospital are on average discharged in less than eight hours.
According to the proposal, 82 percent of ER patients at the university come from the immediate area near the hospital, and a little more than half are on Medicaid or are uninsured.
The Illinois Health Facilities Review Board is scheduled to vote on the proposal in March.
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